h than the view taken by many amiable people who,
while disavowing the actions of the Bolsheviki, seek to mitigate the
judgment which mankind pronounces against them by the plea that, after
all, they are extreme idealists, misguided, of course, but, nevertheless,
inspired by a noble ideal; that they are trying, as John Brown and many
others have tried, to realize a great ideal, but have been made incapable
of seeing their ideal in its proper perspective, and, therefore, of making
the compromises and adjustments which the transmutation of ideals to
reality always requires.

No sympathizer with Russia--certainly no Socialist--can fail to wish that
this indulgent criticism were true. Its acceptance would lighten the
darkest chapter in Russian history, and, at the same time, remove from the
great international Socialist movement a shameful reproach. But the facts
are incompatible with such a theory. Instead of being fanatical idealists,
incapable of compromises and adjustments, the Bolsheviki have, from the
very beginning, been loudly scornful of rigid and unbending idealism; have
made numerous compromises, alliances, and "political deals," and have
repeatedly shifted their ground in accordance with political expediency.
They have been consistently loyal to no aim save one--the control of power.
They have been opportunists of the most extreme type. There is not a single
Socialist or democratic principle which they have not abandoned when it
served, their political ends; not a single instrument, principle, or device
of autocratic despotism which they have not used when by so doing they
could gain power. For the motto of Bolshevism we might well paraphrase the
well-known line of Horace, and make it read, "Get power, honestly, if you
can, if not--somehow or other."

Of course, this judgment applies only to Bolshevism as such: to the special
and peculiar methods and ideas which distinguish the Bolsheviki from their
fellow-Socialists. It is not to be questioned that as Socialists and
revolutionists they have been inspired by some of the great ideals common
to all Socialists everywhere. But they differed from the great mass of
Russian Socialists so fundamentally that they separated themselves from
them and became a separate and distinct party. _That which caused this
separation is the essence of Bolshevism--not the ideals held in common_. No
understanding of Bolshevism is possible unless this fundamental fact is
first fully under