derive its strength. Internationalism also passes, fails before our eyes. In the heart of Russia a lamp is burning before a shrine not at present visible to our eyes. But when the new moment of destiny arrives, that lamp will be carried forth and set upon the highest altar in the Kremlin. It will be the lamp of the genius of the Russian people.

VII

CONCLUSION

THERE have been so many false dawns that one hesitates to herald another. Yet who doubts that Russia in division must become once more united Russia. The quality of the prophecy lies in the allotment of the period of time to elapse. Too often it has been said that the Bolsheviks would shortly be thrown off and that the real Russians would be in the saddle. Yet I hear of money-lenders furnishing needy aristocrats on the security of their presumptive future. I frequently hear of prominent exiles having a Jewish friend and benefactor. The sense of the market is in favour of a restored Russia. On the Stock Exchange the old Russian loans, securities, bonds, are by no means flat and dead. There is a flutter

of life in them due to an instinctive feeling that Russia will recover.

The first vital asset of the old Russia is her

staunch peasantry, a hundred million strong. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, and we have faith that an unpractical, unpopular, and utterly non-representative Government cannot eternally persist. Russia herself, like her ancient firs, is evergreen, but Bolshevism is a deciduous tree. Its leaves fall in the winter, leaving visible the eternal green forest.

If one should consider the plight of the Bolshevik dispassionately, as one might judge the game of a chess-player as one looked over his shoulder and saw how the pieces were placed, one would be inclined to say that White would win. The attack of the Black side has spent itself. The Bolshevik has not now a winning position. Clever onlookers can tell him how he can still save his game, but they leave out of account the psychological factor.

Bolshevism could conceivably compromise with capitalism and evolve a business State. The Bolsheviks hate Russia; they could still further their lust for revenge by handing over Russia, bound hand and foot, to the capitalists of the world. They could parcel up Holy Russia like Imperial Africa and sell it for its oil and gold, and its timber and its platinum. The price to the Bolsheviks would be such a large commission that they and

their heirs could live in grandeur and mock-govern Russia for generations.

It is doubtful in what effective way the White Russia could reply to that. Some say that directly

the Bolsheviks thus surrendered the faith of the Third International they would lose their hold upon the reins of government; any retreat from Marxianism would be fatal-their enemies would spring on them like tigers.

That is an opinion, not necessarily a sound opinion, of what would happen. Trotsky and Krassin and some others are for playing that game; both have families and have a personal instinct for enriching themselves whatever happens. But there is a psychological conflict. Krassin is a man of no will-power or real ambition. Trotsky has been removed from the game.

Zinovief, Kamenef, and Stalin know that they are agitators and class - war makers, not business men. They prefer the Program. Their weakness lies in their sheer incapacity for peaceful government or for business or national development, in their personal rivalries and jealousies, and in their exaggerated view of their personal rôle in history. They are megalosophists, universalists in thought, but shockingly incapable in small practice.

Lenin on one occasion quoted a well-known Russian proverb-" Two and two may sometimes make five, but they do not make a tallow candle " But the Communist Party's arithmetic is, indeed, largely of this tallow candle variety. Zinovief, alias Apfelbaum, is for ever saying

To-day I brew,
To-morrow I bake,

Next day the Queen's daughter I take.
How lucky it is that nobody knows

My name is Rumpelstilchen.

But everybody does know his real name, and the wretched little German Jew with all his antics is the laughing-stock of the world.

The Moscow Junta are highly absurd in the eyes of modern civilisation, and the only reason why we generally eye them silently and do not laugh at them more often is because of a horror at their blood-guiltiness. Murderers in comic parts are grotesque. Their just reward is death.

I hope they will not be assassinated, but that they will be arraigned in a full court, and that with proper dignity their sentence may be read, and that they may then be executed, not in a spirit of revenge, nor in order that justice may be satisfied, but because they have no place here and they have long since been due somewhere else.