from conflicts of the kind involving a sacrifice of what is most valuable in the individual.  In Russia at this moment, the sacrifice of the individual is largely inevitable, because of the severity of the economic and military struggle.  But I did not feel, in the Bolsheviks, any consciousness of the magnitude of this misfortune, or any realization of the importance of the individual as against the State.  Nor do I believe that men who do realize this are likely to succeed, or to come to the top, in times when everything has to be done against personal liberty.  The Bolshevik theory requires that every country, sooner or later, should go through what Russia is going through now.  And in every country in such a condition we may expect to find the government falling into the hands of ruthless men, who have not by nature any love for freedom, and who will see little importance in hastening the transition from dictatorship to freedom.  It is far more likely that such men will be tempted to embark upon new enterprises, requiring further concentration of forces, and postponing indefinitely the liberation of the populations which they use as their material.

For these reasons, equalization of wealth without equalization of power seems to me a rather small and unstable achievement.  But equalization of power is not a thing that can be achieved in a day.  It requires a considerable level of moral, intellectual, and technical education.  It requires a long period without extreme crises, in order that habits of tolerance and good nature may become common.  It requires vigour on the part of those who are acquiring power, without a too desperate resistance on the part of those whose share is diminishing.  This is only possible if those who are acquiring power are not very fierce, and do not terrify their opponents by threats of ruin and death.  It cannot be done quickly, because quick methods require that very mechanism and subordination of the individual which we should struggle to prevent.

But even equalization of power is not the whole of what is needed politically.  The right grouping of men for different purposes is also essential.  Self-government in industry, for example, is an indispensable condition of a good society.  Those acts of an individual or a group which have no very great importance for outsiders ought to be freely decided by that individual or group.  This is recognized as regards religion, but ought to be recognized over a much wider field.

Bolshevik theory seems to me to err by concentrating its attention upon one evil, namely inequality of wealth, which it believes to be at the bottom of all others.  I do not believe any one evil can be thus isolated, but if I had to select one as the greatest of political evils, I should select inequality of power.  And I should deny that this is likely to be cured by the class-war and the dictatorship of the Communist party.  Only peace and a long period of gradual improvement can bring it about.