m at their
own skilled work. Then if, besides transplanting them, they are able to
feed them, it will be possible to judge of the success or failure of a
scheme which in most countries would bring a Government toppling to the
ground.

"In most countries"; yes, but then the economic crisis has gone
further in Russia than in most countries. There is talk of introducing
industrial conscription (one year's service) in Germany, where things
have not gone nearly so far. And perhaps industrial conscription, like
Communism itself, becomes a thing of desperate hope only in a country
actually face to face with ruin. I remember saying to Trotsky, when
talking of possible opposition, that I, as an Englishman, with the
tendencies to practical anarchism belonging to my race, should certainly
object most strongly if I were mobilized and set to work in a particular
factory, and might even want to work in some other factory just for the
sake of not doing what I was forced to do. Trotsky replied: "You would
now. But you would not if you had been through a revolution, and seen
your country in such a state that only the united, concentrated effort
of everybody could possibly reestablish it. That is the position here.
Everybody knows the position and that there is no other way."

WHAT THE COMMUNISTS ARE TRYING TO DO IN RUSSIA

We come now to the Communist plans for reconstruction. We have seen, in
the first two chapters, something of the appalling paralysis which is
the most striking factor in the economic problem to-day. We have seen
how Russia is suffering from a lack of things and from a lack of labor,
how these two shortages react on each other, and how nothing but a vast
improvement in transport can again set in motion what was one of the
great food-producing machines of the world. We have also seen something
of the political organization which, with far wider ambitions before
it, is at present struggling to prevent temporary paralysis from turning
into permanent atrophy. We have seen that it consists of a political
party so far dominant that the Trades Unions and all that is articulate
in the country may be considered as part of a machinery of propaganda,
for getting those things done which that political party considers
should be done. In a country fighting, literally, for its life, no man
can call his soul his own, and we have seen how this fact-a fact that
has become obvious again and again in the history of the world,