It is a curious illustration of the superficial character of the Bolshevist mentality that a man so gifted intellectually as Lenine undoubtedly is should advance in justification of his policy a plea so repugnant to morality and intelligence, and that it should be quietly accepted by men and women calling themselves radical revolutionists.  Some years ago a well-known American capitalist announced with great solemnity that he and men like himself were the agents of Providence, charged with managing industry “for the good of the people.”  Naturally, his naive claim provoked the scornful laughter of every radical in the land.  Yet, strange as it may seem, whenever I have pointed out to popular audiences that Lenine asserted the right of two hundred thousand proletarians to impose their rule upon Russia, always, without a single exception, some defender of the Bolsheviki—­generally a Socialist or a member of the I.W.W.—­has entered the plea, “Yes, but it is for the good of the people!”

If the Bolsheviki had wanted to see the realization of the ideals of the Revolution, they would have found in the conditions existing immediately prior to their insurrection a challenge calling them to the service of the nation, in support of the Provisional Government and the Preliminary Parliament.  They would have permitted nothing to imperil the success of the program that was so well advanced.  As it was, determination to defeat that program was their impelling motive.  Not only did they fear and oppose political democracy; they were equally opposed to democracy in industry, to that democracy in the economic life of the nation which every Socialist movement in the world had at all times acknowledged to be its goal.  As we shall see, they united to political dictatorship industrial dictatorship.  They did not want democracy, but power; they did not want peace, even, as they wanted power.

The most painstaking and sympathetic study of the Russian Revolution will not disclose any great ideal or principle, moral or political, underlying the distinctive Bolshevik agitation and program.  Nothing could well be farther from the truth than the view taken by many amiable people who, while disavowing the actions of the Bolsheviki, seek to mitigate the judgment which mankind pronounces against them by the plea that, after all, they are extreme idealists, misguided, of course, but, nevertheless, inspired by a noble ideal; that they are trying, as John Brown and many others have tried, to realize a great ideal, but have been made incapable of seeing their ideal in its proper perspective, and, therefore, of making the compromises and adjustments which the transmutation of ideals to reality always requires.