strating on
paper how the rough places of life may be made plain and its crooked ones
made straight. And it is not a vain and fruitless waste of effort and of
time, as things so easy of achievement often are. Many of the noblest minds
of all lands and all ages have found pleasure and satisfaction in the
imagining of ideal commonwealths and by so doing have rendered great
service to mankind, enriching literature and, what is more important,
stimulating the urge and passion for improvement and the faith of men in
their power to climb to the farthest heights of their dreams. But the
material of life is hard and lacks the plastic quality of inspired
imagination. Though there is probably no single evil which exists for which
a solution has not been devised in the wonderful laboratory of visioning,
the perversity of the subtle and mysterious thing called life is such that
many great and grave evils continue to challenge, perplex, and harass our
humankind.

Yet, notwithstanding the plain lesson of history and experience, the
reminder impressed on every page of humanity's record, that between the
glow and the glamour of the vision and its actual realization stretches a
long, long road, there are many simple-minded souls to whom the vision
gleamed is as the goal attained. They do not distinguish between schemes on
paper and ideals crystallized into living realities. This type of mind is
far more common than is generally recognized; that is why so many people
quite seriously believe that the Bolsheviki have really established in
Russia a society which conforms to the generous ideals of social democracy.
They have read the rhetorical "decrees" and "proclamations" in which the
shibboleths of freedom and democracy abound, and are satisfied. Yet it
ought to be plainly evident to any intelligent person that, even if the
decrees and proclamations were as sound as they are in fact unsound, and as
definite as they are in fact vague, they would afford no real basis for
judging Bolshevism as an actual experiment in social polity. There is, in
ultimate analysis, only one test to apply to Bolshevism--namely, the test
of reality. We must ask what the Bolsheviki did, not what they professed;
what was the performance, not what was the promise.

Of course, this does not mean that we are to judge result wholly without
regard to aim. Admirable intention is still admirable as intention, even
when untoward circumstance defeats it and brings deplorab