would have felt exactly the same.  On the other hand, it was of the essence of his faith that his policy would lead to the overthrow of all capitalist-imperialist governments, those of Germany and her allies no less than those ranged on the other side.  Germany might reason that a revolutionary uprising led by Lenine would rid her of one of her enemies and enable her to hurl larger forces against the foe on the western front.  At that reasoning Lenine would smile in derision, thoroughly believing that any uprising he might bring about in Russia would sweep westward and destroy the whole fabric of Austro-German capitalist-imperialism.  Lenine knew that he was being used by Germany, but he believed that he, in turn, was using Germany.  He was supremely confident that he could outplay the German statesmen and military leaders.

It was a dangerous game that Lenine was playing, and he knew it, but the stakes were high and worth the great risk involved.  It was not necessary for Germany to buy the service he could render to her; that service would be an unavoidable accompaniment of his mission.  He argued that his work could, at the worst, give only temporary advantage to Germany.  So far as there is any evidence to show, Lenine has been personally incorruptible.  Holding lightly what he scornfully derides as “bourgeois morality,” unmoral rather than immoral, willing to use any and all means to achieve ends which he sincerely believes to be the very highest and noblest that ever inspired mankind, he would, doubtless, take German money if he saw that it would help him to achieve his purposes.  He would do so, however, without any thought of self-aggrandizement.  It is probably safe and just to believe that if Lenine ever took money from the Germans, either at that time or subsequently, he did so in this spirit, believing that the net result of his efforts would be equally disastrous to all the capitalist governments concerned in the war.  It must be remembered, moreover, that the distinctions drawn by most thoughtful men between autocratic governments like those which ruled Germany and Austria and the more democratic governments of France, England, and America, have very little meaning or value to men like Lenine.  They regard the political form as relatively unimportant; what matters is the fundamental economic class interest represented by the governments.  Capitalist governments are all equally undesirable.

What Lenine’s program was when he left Switzerland is easily learned.  A few days before he left Switzerland he delivered a lecture on “The Russian Revolution,” in which he made a careful statement of his position.  It gives a very good idea of Lenine’s mental processes.  It shows him as a Marxist of the most dogmatic type—­the type which caused Marx himself to rejoice that he was not a “Marxist”: