the contrary to what it is--if it were a success, a
thing not absolutely impossible in a peasant-State, we might
understand the self-assurance of those who, in opposition to our
forecast, expect everything from the will of the people, the Soviet
system and the inspirations of the future. We do understand it in the
case of the drawing-room communists, and the profiteer-extremists who
are out not for the cause, but for power, and perhaps only for
material objects.

I know that by these observations I am favouring the cause of those
sorry dignitaries of a day, the Majority Socialists, but I cannot help
that. The truth is not false because it favours one party, nor is
falsehood truth because it harms the other. The Socialism now in
power is doing the right thing, although it is doing it out of
ignorance and helplessness--it is waiting, and getting steam up. It is
better to do the right thing out of error than to do the wrong thing
out of wisdom. Out of error: for besides omitting to do what ought not
to be done it also omits the things it ought to do--among others, the
introduction of the New Economy.[8] It is like mankind before the
Fall; it does not know good from evil, what is useful and what is
noxious, what can be done and what cannot. Well--let it take its time;
it shall have time enough.

This time must be turned to good account. When we have come to the end
of these observations we shall understand what a huge task lies
between us and the realization of the new social order. In this case
the longest way round is the shortest way home. And even if Germany
should choose the mountain road with its broad loops and windings, we
shall stray often enough, and go backward now and then; while if, in
impatient revolt, we try to climb straight up, we shall slip down
lower than where we started. Let us never forget how mysteriously our
social and political immaturity seems to be bound up with our once
lofty and even now remarkable intellectuality and morality.[9] We have
not won our liberties, they have fallen into our laps; it was by the
general breakdown, by a strike, by a flight, that Germany and her
former rulers have parted company. These liberties, social and
political, are not rooted in the soil, they can hardly be said to be
prized among the treasures of life, it is not their ideal, but their
material side which attracts us. Those who used to shout Hurrah! now
cry "All power to the Soviets!" and the day will come when