he lessening of production the workmen
were discharged in a body and quit the factories; second, the Bolsheviki
put obstacles in the way of the elections and sometimes openly prohibited
them. Nevertheless, wherever they could be held, the results were
unfavorable to the Bolsheviki.

Finally, when the working classes clearly saw the shameful role played by
the Bolsheviki in the matter of peace, when they saw the Bolsheviki humbly
beg for peace at any price from the Germans, they understood that it was
impossible to continue to tolerate such a government. _The Central
Committee of the Revolutionary Socialist party published a Manifesto
appealing to an armed fight against the Bolshevik government and the German
gangs_ that were overrunning the country.

The frightful results of this "peace," so extolled by the Bolsheviki,
rendered even the name of the Bolshevist government odious in the eyes of
every conscientious and honest man.

* * * * *

But Bolshevism still endures, for it is based on the armed force of the Red
Guard, on the supineness of the masses deprived of a political education,
and not accustomed to fight or to act, and from ancient habit of submitting
to force.

The causes which produced Bolshevism are: first, the accumulation of all
the conditions of the historic past of the Russian people; second, their
psychic character and their habits; third, the conditions of the present
time; and fourth, the general situation of the world--that is to say, the
war.

We also note the vague and hesitating policy of the Provisional Government;
the lack of political education among the people, ready to follow him who
promises the most; small development of civic sentiment; the want of any
attachment whatever to the state--that of the Romanov having never given
anything to the people and having taken all from them. Czarism took from
the miserable peasant his last penny under form of taxes; it took his
children from him for war; for the least act of disobedience to authority
he was whipped. He wallowed in misery and in ignorance, deprived of every
right, human or legal. How could he, this wretched and oppressed peasant
develop civic sentiments, a consciousness of his personal dignity? On the
other hand, we must take into account the immense weariness caused by the
war and by the disorganization which it brought into the whole cycle of
existence (to an incomparably greater degree than in west