In the Western World, the hope inspired by Bolshevism is more immediate, less shot through with tragedy.  Western Socialists who have visited Russia have seen fit to suppress the harsher features of the present regime, and have disseminated a belief among their followers that the millennium would be quickly realized there if there were no war and no blockade.  Even those Socialists who are not Bolsheviks for their own country have mostly done very little to help men in appraising the merits or demerits of Bolshevik methods.  By this lack of courage they have exposed Western Socialism to the danger of becoming Bolshevik through ignorance of the price that has to be paid and of the uncertainty as to whether the desired goal will be reached in the end.  I believe that the West is capable of adopting less painful and more certain methods of reaching Socialism than those that have seemed necessary in Russia.  And I believe that while some forms of Socialism are immeasurably better than capitalism, others are even worse.  Among those that are worse I reckon the form which is being achieved in Russia, not only in itself, but as a more insuperable barrier to further progress.

In judging of Bolshevism from what is to be seen in Russia at present, it is necessary to disentangle various factors which contribute to a single result.  To begin with, Russia is one of the nations that were defeated in the war; this has produced a set of circumstances resembling those found in Germany and Austria.  The food problem, for example, appears to be essentially similar in all three countries.  In order to arrive at what is specifically Bolshevik, we must first eliminate what is merely characteristic of a country which has suffered military disaster.  Next we come to factors which are Russian, which Russian Communists share with other Russians, but not with other Communists.  There is, for example, a great deal of disorder and chaos and waste, which shocks Westerners (especially Germans) even when they are in close political sympathy with the Bolsheviks.  My own belief is that, although, with the exception of a few very able men, the Russian Government is less efficient in organization than the Germans or the Americans would be in similar circumstances, yet it represents what is most efficient in Russia, and does more to prevent chaos than any possible alternative government would do.  Again, the intolerance and lack of liberty which has been inherited from the Tsarist regime is probably to be regarded as Russian rather than Communist.  If a Communist Party were to acquire power in England, it would probably be met by a less irresponsible opposition, and would be able to show itself far more tolerant than any government can hope to be in Russia if it is to escape assassination.  This, however, is a matter of degree.  A great part of the despotism which characterizes the Bolsheviks belongs to the essence of their social philosophy, and would have to be reproduced, even if in a milder form, wherever that philosophy became dominant.