to rebuild at all, to
rebuild Russia on foundations laid by common sense. It may be said
that the Communists are merely doing flamboyantly and with a lot of
flag-waving, what any other Russian Government would be doing in their
place. And without the flamboyance and the flag-waving, it is doubtful
whether in an exhausted country, it would be possible to get anything
done at all. The result of this is that in their work of economic
reconstruction the Communists get the support of most of the best
engineers and other technicians in the country, men who take no interest
whatsoever in the ideas of Karl Marx, but have a professional interest
in doing the best they can with their knowledge, and a patriotic
satisfaction in using that knowledge for Russia. These men, caring not
at all about Communism, want to make Russia once more a comfortably
habitable place, no matter under what Government. Their attitude is
precisely comparable to that of the officers of the old army who have
contributed so much to the success of the new. These officers were not
Communists, but they disliked civil war, and fought to put an end of it.
As Sergei Kamenev, the Commander-in-Chief, and not a Communist, said
to me, "I have not looked on the civil war as on a struggle between two
political ideas, for the Whites have no definite idea. I have considered
it simply as a struggle between the Russian Government and a number of
mutineers." Precisely so do these "bourgeois" technicians now working
throughout Russia regard the task before them. It will be small
satisfaction to them if famine makes the position of any Government
impossible. For them the struggle is quite simply a struggle between
Russia and the economic forces tending towards a complete collapse of
civilization.

The Communists have thus practically the whole intelligence of the
country to help them in their task of reconstruction, or of salvage.
But the educated classes alone cannot save a nation. Muscle is wanted
besides brain, and the great bulk of those who can provide muscle
are difficult to move to enthusiasm by any broad schemes of economic
rearrangement that do not promise immediate improvement in their own
material conditions. Industrial conscription cannot be enforced
in Russia unless there is among the conscripted themselves an
understanding, although a resentful understanding, of its necessity. The
Russians have not got an army of Martians to enforce effort on an alien
people.