ith a sublime disregard for facts and history,
persist in extolling the tenets of Russian Communism as new discoveries
in the art of government. They assert that the Bolshevists have solved
for the first time in history the problem of social equality. They say
the experiment of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" has never before
been attempted and that it fails to find favor outside Russia because
peoples are always prone to condemn what they do not understand.

Russia, however, is but the last of many countries to rebel against its
own prosperity. During the twenty years preceding the World War Russia
enjoyed the greatest growth and development, both of its resources and
education, in the history of the country. Two-thirds of the agricultural
land in the nation was owned and occupied by the farming classes, which
comprised nearly three-fourths of the population. In ten years the
number of depositors in the savings banks of Russia had doubled and the
gross amount of the deposits had quadrupled.

Then came the war, to be followed by Bolshevism. The experience of
Russia in the last two years, however, is not unique in the history of
nations. The narration of the spoliation of the rich, the confiscation
of the estates and the profligate waste of the national substance is
only a repetition, almost verse for verse and line for line, of the
license and the abuses of the last years of the Athenian democracy. It
was then demonstrated that the impoverishing of the rich could not
enrich the poor, and that a state without wealth will soon be a state
without liberty. In the idiom of the gallery gods, it is all "old
stuff."

The Charmides of Xenophon's "Banquet" celebrates the pleasures and
profits of poverty. He once possessed a fortune that made him fear
thieves and sycophants--in reality the same thing--Athens had levied
heavy taxes on the rich and had passed laws making it a capital offense
for a person of wealth to attempt to flee the state. The money raised by
thus taxing the wealthy was distributed to the poor in the public
places. Any one holding a certificate showing that he had not sufficient
wealth to be taxed was admitted free to the theaters and was entitled to
one meal a day at restaurants supported by the state.

The people's council, fearful that there might be a disposition to stop
this waste of public money, passed acts which decreed capital punishment
to any orator who should propose to modify the laws which