them as an inevitable consequence of the nation’s disappointment.  Thus the representative of nearly every state which had a territorial program declared that that program must be carried out if Bolshevism was to be averted there.  “This or else Bolshevism” was the peroration of many a delegate’s expose.  More redoubtable than political discontent was the proselytizing activity of the leaders of the movement in Russia.

Of the two pillars of Bolshevism one is a Russian, the other a Jew, the former, Ulianoff (better known as Lenin), the brain; the other, Braunstein (called Trotzky), the arm of the sect.  Trotzky is an unscrupulous despot, in whose veins flows the poison of malignity.  His element is cruelty, his special gift is organizing capacity.  Lenin is a Utopian, whose fanaticism, although extensive, has well-defined limits.  In certain things he disagrees profoundly with Trotzky.  He resembles a religious preacher in this, that he created a body of veritable disciples around himself.  He might be likened to a pope with a college of international cardinals.  Thus he has French, British, German, Austrian, Czech, Italian, Danish, Swedish, Japanese, Hindu, Chinese, Buryat, and many other followers, who are chiefs of proselytizing sections charged with the work of spreading the Bolshevik evangel throughout the globe, and are working hard to discharge their duties.  Lenin, however, dissatisfied with the measures of success already attained, is constantly stimulating his disciples to more strenuous exertions.  He shares with other sectarian chiefs who have played a prominent part in the world’s history that indefinable quality which stirs emotional susceptibility and renders those who approach him more easily accessible to ideas toward which they began by manifesting repugnance.  Lenin is credibly reported to have made several converts among his Western opponents.

The plenipotentiaries, during the first four months, approached Bolshevism from a single direction, unvaried by the events which it generated or the modifications which it underwent.  They tested it solely by its accidental bearings on the one aim which they were intent on securing—­a formal and provisional resettlement of Europe capable of being presented to their respective parliaments as a fair achievement.  With its real character, its manifold corollaries, its innovating tendencies over the social, political, and ethnical domain, they were for the time being unconcerned.  Without the slightest reference to any of these considerations they were ready to find a place for it in the new state system with which they hoped to endow the world.  More than once they were on the point of giving it official recognition.  There was no preliminary testing, sifting, or examining by these empiricists, who, finding Bolshevism on their way, and discerning no facile means of dislodging or transforming it, signified their willingness under easy conditions to hallmark and incorporate it as one of the elements of the new ordering.  From the crimes laid to its charge they were prepared to make abstraction.  The barbarous methods to which it owed its very existence they were willing to consign to oblivion.  And it was only a freak of circumstance that hindered this embodiment of despotism from beginning one of their accepted means of rendering the world safe for democracy.