that is not
quite the truth, but he did not say what the truth is.[3]

The last question I asked him was whether resumption of trade with
capitalist countries, if it took place, would not create centres of
capitalist influence, and make the preservation of Communism more
difficult? It had seemed to me that the more ardent Communists might
well dread commercial intercourse with the outer world, as leading to
an infiltration of heresy, and making the rigidity of the present
system almost impossible. I wished to know whether he had such a
feeling. He admitted that trade would create difficulties, but said
they would be less than those of the war. He said that two years ago
neither he nor his colleagues thought they could survive against the
hostility of the world. He attributes their survival to the jealousies
and divergent interests of the different capitalist nations; also to
the power of Bolshevik propaganda. He said the Germans had laughed
when the Bolsheviks proposed to combat guns with leaflets, but that
the event had proved the leaflets quite as powerful. I do not think he
recognizes that the Labour and Socialist parties have had any part in
the matter. He does not seem to know that the attitude of British
Labour has done a great deal to make a first-class war against Russia
impossible, since it has confined the Government to what could be done
in a hole-and-corner way, and denied without a too blatant mendacity.

He thoroughly enjoys the attacks of Lord Northcliffe, to whom he
wishes to send a medal for Bolshevik propaganda. Accusations of
spoliation, he remarked, may shock the _bourgeois_, but have an
opposite effect upon the proletarian.

I think if I had met him without knowing who he was, I should not have
guessed that he was a great man; he struck me as too opinionated and
narrowly orthodox. His strength comes, I imagine, from his honesty,
courage, and unwavering faith--religious faith in the Marxian gospel,
which takes the place of the Christian martyr's hopes of Paradise,
except that it is less egotistical. He has as little love of liberty
as the Christians who suffered under Diocletian, and retaliated when
they acquired power. Perhaps love of liberty is incompatible with
whole-hearted belief in a panacea for all human ills. If so, I cannot
but rejoice in the sceptical temper of the Western world. I went to
Russia a Communist; but contact with those who have no doubts has
intensified a thousandfold my own