which we call patriotism,
and understand perfectly; it is much stronger in the new
than it was in the old, the Tsar's, Russia. But there is
another force back of this remarkable statement of a
remarkable state of mind.

All Russia has turned to the labor of reconstruction; sees
the idea in the plans proposed for the future; and is
interested--imaginatively.

Destruction was fun for a while and a satisfaction to a
suppressed, betrayed, to an almost destroyed people.
Violence was not in their character, however. The Russian
people, sober, are said to be a gentle people. One of their
poets speaks of them as "that gentle beast, the Russian
people," and I noticed and described in my reports of the
first revolution how patient, peaceable, and "safe" the mobs
of Petrograd were. The violence came later, with Bolshevism,
after the many attempts at counterrevolution, and with
vodka. The Bolshevik leaders regret and are ashamed of their
red terror. They do not excuse it. It was others, you
remember, who traced the worst of the Russian atrocities and
the terror itself to the adoption by the
counter-revolutionists of the method of assassination (of
Lenin and others), and most of all to the discovery by the
mobs of wine cellars and vodka stills. That the Russian
drunk and the Russian sober are two utterly different
animals, is well known to the Jews, to the Reactionaries,
and to the Russians themselves. And that is why this people
lately have not only obeyed; they have themselves ruthlessly
enforced the revolutionary prohibition decrees in every part
of Russia that we would inquire about and hear from.

The destructive spirit, sated, exhausted, or suppressed, has
done its work. The leaders say so--the leaders of all
parties.

There is a close relationship between the Russian people and
the new Russian leaders, in power and out. New men in
politics are commonly fresh, progressive, representative;
it's the later statesmen that damp the enthusiasm and sober
the idealism of legislators. In Russia all legislators, all,
are young or new. It is as if we should elect in the United
States a brand-new set of men to all offices, from the
lowest county to the highest Federal position, and as if the
election should occur in a great crisi