elling Russia, in order to be
recognized, to guarantee the payment of obligations assumed previous
to the War and the revolution. Civilization has already suppressed
corporal punishment for insolvent debtors, and slavery, from which
individuals are released, should not be imposed on nations by
democracies which say they are civilized.

The fall of the communistic organization in Russia is inevitable. Very
probably from the immense revolutionary catastrophe which has hit
Russia there will spring up the diffusion of a regime of small landed
proprietors. Whatever is contrary to human nature is not lasting, and
communism can only accumulate misery, and on its ruins will arise new
forms of life which we cannot yet define. But Bolshevik Russia can
count still on two elements which we do not habitually take into
account: the apathy and indolence of the people on the one hand, and
the strength of the military organization on the other. No other
people would have resigned itself to the intense misery and to the
infinite sufferings which tens of millions of Russians endure without
complaint. But still in the midst of so much misery no other people
would have known how to maintain a powerful and disciplined army such
as is the army of revolutionary Russia.

The Russian people have never had any sympathy for the military
undertakings which the Entente has aided. During some of the meetings
of Premiers at Paris and London I had occasion, in the sittings of
the conferences, to speak with the representatives of the new
States, especially those from the Caucasus. They were all agreed
in considering that the action of the men of the old regime, and
especially Denikin, was directed at the suppression of the independent
States and to the return of the old forms, and they attributed to this
the aversion of the Russian people to them.

Certainly it is difficult to speak of Russia where there exists no
longer a free Press and the people have hardly any other preoccupation
than that of not dying of hunger. Although it is a disastrous
organization, the organization of the Soviet remains still the only
one, which it is not possible to substitute immediately with another.
Although the Russian people can re-enter slowly into international
life and take up again its thread, a long time is necessary, but also
it is necessary to change tactics.

The peasants, who form the enormous mass of the Russian people, look
with terror on the old regime.