e. Ceased
is the stimulus of individual interest; few work; the peasants work
only to produce what their families need; the workers in the city are
chiefly engaged in meetings and political reunions. All wish to
live upon the State, and production, organized autocratically and
bureaucratically, every day dries up and withers a bit more.

To those who read the collection of laws issued by the Bolshevik
government many institutions appear not only reasonable, but also full
of interest and justice. Also many laws of the absolute governments
of past regimes appear intelligent and noble. But the law has not in
itself any power of creation; it regulates relations, does not create
them. It can even take away wealth from some and give it to others,
but cannot create the wealth. When the individual interest begins to
lack, work, which is sorrow and pain, lags and does not produce. To
begin with, it weakens in the short days when energy is avoided, and
then it stops through incapacity for energy. The old fundamental truth
is that in all the Aryan tongues the words which indicate work have
the same root as the words which denote pain. Among the great mass of
man work is only done by necessity or under the stimulus of individual
interest which excites the production of wealth. They work for wealth;
and therefore in the Aryan tongues wealth means dominion and power.

Two years ago I wanted, in spite of the opinion of others, to consent
to the Italian Socialists visiting Russia. I was convinced that
nothing would have served better to break in Italy the sympathy
for Russia, or rather the illusions of the revolutionaries, as the
spectacle of famine and disorder would. Never did the Press of my
country, or the greater part of it, criticize with more violence a
proposal which I considered to be both wise and prudent. I am glad to
state that I was right, and that, maybe through the uncertainties
and the lessons of those who had spread the illusions, the Italian
Socialists returned from Russia were bound to recognize that the
communist experiment was the complete ruin of the Russian people. No
conservative propaganda could have been more efficacious than the
vision of the truth.

I am convinced that the hostile attitude, and almost persecution, on
the part of the Entente rather helped the Bolshevik government, whose
claims to discredit were already so numerous that it was not necessary
to nullify it by an unjust and evident persecution