l
possession to realize it. It was the hegemony of the world. This
aspiration transfigured, possessed, fanaticized them. Teutondom became
to them what Islam is to Mohammedans of every race, even when they shake
off religion. They eschewed no means, however iniquitous, that seemed to
lead to the goal. They ceased to be human in order to force Europe to
become German. Offering up the elementary principles of morality on the
altar of patriotism, they staked their all upon the single venture of
the war. It was as the throw of a gambler playing for his soul with the
Evil One. Yet the faith of these materialists waxed heroic withal, like
their self-sacrifice. And in the fiery ardor of their enthusiasm, hard
concrete facts were dissolved and set floating as illusions in the
ambient mist. Their wishes became thoughts and their fears were
dispelled as fancies. They beheld only what they yearned for, and when
at last they dropped from the dizzy height of their castles in cloudland
their whole world, era, and ideal was shattered. Unavailing remorse,
impotent rage, spiritual and intense physical exhaustion completed their
demoralization. The more harried and reckless among them became
frenzied. Turning first against their rulers, then against one another,
they finally started upon a work of wanton destruction relieved by no
creative idea. It was at this time-point that they endeavored to join
hands with their tumultuous Eastern neighbors, and that the one word
"Bolshevism" connoted the revolutionary wave that swept over some of the
Slav and German lands. But only for a moment. One may safely assert, as
a general proposition, that the same undertaking, if the Germans and the
Russians set their hands to it, becomes forthwith two separate
enterprises, so different are the conceptions and methods of these two
peoples. Bolshevism was almost emptied of its contents by the Germans,
and little left of it but the empty shell.

Comparisons between the orgasms of collective madness which accompanied
the Russian welter, on the one hand, and the French Revolution, on the
other, are unfruitful and often misleading. It is true that at the
outset those spasms of delirium were in both cases violent reactions
against abuses grown well-nigh unbearable. It is also a fact that the
revolutionists derived their preterhuman force from historic events
which had either denuded those abuses of their secular protection or
inspired their victims with wonder-wo