Tar Duke of Wellington is said once to have remarked that the secret of military science was to be able to guess what was transpiring on the other side of the hill—the hill,, presumably, that lay between his own forces and those of the enemy. For the past three years the world has been very curious to know what was transpiring behind the mists that have veiled Russia from sight. Thanks to Mrs. Snowden, Mr. Bertrand Russell and, last in point of time, Mr. H. G. Wells, those mists have been pierced and, though we only see through a glass darkly, Russia, in her hideous want and wretchedness, looms darkly before us. The writers we have named are all prejudiced witnesses. They are communists or socialists or of some other ''ist'' or ''ism'' that is kith and kin to the Bolsheviki. For this reason they were welcomed to the land of the darkening shadow and were feted and shepherded and shown all that was good—if good there was—that they might give a favourable report in foreign lands and the red dream of a world-wide revolt of the proletariat and the destruetion of the present social system be brought a step nearer. The reports which have been given to the public by these apostles of socialism, each and all, attempt to show Russia in the most favourable light, and yet the impression left on the reader's mind by the tale they have to tell is one of disappointment and almost of despair, Lenin, Trotsky and their Tovarisches (kamerads) have accomplished more destrnetion and inflicted more misery on their fellow-men than any rulers in the world's history, Genghis Khan and Tamerlane not except-
Mr. Wells blames European "imperialism for the desperate condition to which the country has been brought, but that is evidently special pleading. He says: ''The direct cause of its downfall has been modern war leading to physical exhaustion. Only through that could the Bolsheviki have secured power.'' In the hour of the nation's collapse a pitiful minority of extremists seized the reins of power and brought about this unparalleled disaster. The root cause of the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.