or overthrowing the old order of things till the
masses had been intellectually prepared for the new, and they objected
to the foundation of the new regime being laid by despots, however
well-intentioned in the Socialist sense. The people must be made happy
and preserved in a state of happiness by the people themselves.

In the last place came the least impatient of all, the Social Democrats,
who differ widely from all the preceding categories.

All previous revolutionary groups had systematically rejected the idea
of a gradual transition from the bourgeois to the Socialist regime. They
would not listen to any suggestion about a constitutional monarchy or
a democratic republic even as a mere intermediate stage of social
development. All such things, as part and parcel of the bourgeois
system, were anathematised. There must be no half-way houses between
present misery and future happiness; for many weary travellers might be
tempted to settle there in the desert, and fail to reach the promised
land. "Ever onward" should be the watchword, and no time should be
wasted on the foolish struggles of political parties and the empty
vanities of political life.

Not thus thought the Social Democrat. He was much wiser in his
generation. Having seen how the attempts of the impatient groups had
ended in disaster, and knowing that, if they had succeeded, the old
effete despotism would probably have been replaced by a young, vigorous
one more objectionable than its predecessor, he determined to try a more
circuitous but surer road to the goal which the impatient people had
in view. In his opinion the distance from the present Russian regime
protected by autocracy to the future Socialist paradise was far too
great to be traversed in a single stage, and he knew of one or two
comfortable rest-houses on the way. First there was the rest-house of
Constitutionalism, with parliamentary institutions. For some years
the bourgeoisie would doubtless have a parliamentary majority, but
gradually, by persistent effort, the Fourth Estate would gain the upper
hand, and then the Socialist millennium might be proclaimed. Meanwhile,
what had to be done was to gain the confidence of the masses, especially
of the factory workers, who were more intelligent and less conservative
than the peasantry, and to create powerful labour organisations as
material for a future political party.

This programme implied, of course, a certain unity of action with the
c