o whether by these
means the Russians will succeed in finding their way out of the quagmire
of industrial ruin in which they are involved. I can only say that they
are unlikely to find their way out by any other means. I think this is
instinctively felt in Russia. Not otherwise would it have been possible
for the existing organization, battling with one hand to save the towns
front starvation, to destroy with the other the various forces clothed
and armed by Western Europe, which have attempted its undoing. The mere
fact of continued war has, of course, made progress in the solution of
the economic problem almost impossible, but the fact that the economic
problem was unsolved, must have made war impossible, if it were not that
the instinct of the people was definitely against Russian or foreign
invaders. Consider for one moment the military position.

Although the enthusiasm for the Polish war began to subside (even among
the Communists) as soon as the Poles had been driven back from Kiev to
their own frontiers, although the Poles are occupying an enormous area
of non-Polish territory, although the Communists have had to conclude
with Poland a peace obviously unstable, the military position of Soviet
Russia is infinitely better this time than it was in 1918 or 1919. In
1918 the Ukraine was held by German troops and the district east of the
Ukraine was in the hands of General Krasnov, the author of a flattering
letter to the Kaiser. In the northwest the Germans were at Pskov,
Vitebsk and Mohilev. We ourselves were at Murmansk and Archangel. In the
east, the front which became known as that of Kolchak, was on the
Volga. Soviet Russia was a little hungry island with every prospect of
submersion. A year later the Germans had vanished, the flatterers of the
Kaiser had joined hands with those who were temporarily flattering the
Allies, Yudenitch's troops were within sight of Petrograd, Denikin was
at Orel, almost within striking distance of Moscow; there had been a
stampede of desertion from the Red Army. There was danger that Finland
might strike at any moment. Although in the east Kolchak had been swept
over the Urals to his ultimate disaster, the situation of Soviet Russia
seemed even more desperate than in the year before. What is the position
today! Esthonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Finland are at peace with
Russia. The Polish peace brings comparative quiet to the western front,
although the Poles, keeping the letter rat