ing, endlessly debating while in actual life chaos increased, Trotzky has debated and organized.

When Trotzky joined Lenin in May, 1917, there was perfect accord between the two upon fundamentals. But Trotzky saw more clearly than Lenin the practical forms in which their ideas would have to be expressed. Like Lenin, he had started as an orthodox Marxist, believing that Russia must go through an extensive capitalist development before Socialism would become a possibility. The Revolution of 1905 caused him to change his view in this particular. He reached the belief that it was quite possible for Russia to jump from absolutism to Socialism in a single bound, provided there was the leadership intelligently and courageously to grasp and direct circumstances.

He contended that the Russian bourgeoisie was not a growing class, rising to power to succeed the class that had ruled, the bureaucracy, but a decadent class, sinking with the bureaucracy. Therefore, instead of a period of bourgeois rule preceding rule by the proletariat, the latter class must come into immediate power, however ill-prepared. There must be some compromise with the peasants, with their agrarian program, which he regarded as essentially reactionary. They must be placated so that they would acquiesce in a dictatorship by the extremely small proletarian class. Let the peasants, therefore, be encouraged to

take the land in their own way, which the Marxists had always denounced as reactionary. That would leave the proletariat free to consolidate their grip upon the State power. Such was the Lenin-Trotzky creed and program.

To the soldiers at the front the Bolsheviki preached defeatism, mass surrender, fraternization with the enemy soldiers. Publicly they urged the Provisional Government to make peace. They indignantly denied that they were advocating a "separate peace with Germany," which at that time would still have roused a storm of antagonism, but they urged peace in such a manner as could leave no doubt that separate peace would result. Among the peasants they urged that now was the time to seize the land; that it was dangerous folly to wait for the Constituent Assembly and the scheme of land apportionment.

There was a Soviet of workmen's, soldiers' and peasants' representatives, which was cooperating with the Provisional Government. Its existence complicated the task of the latter. The old evil of frictions due to divided counsel, and of overlapping and conflicting authority, was its inevitable contribution. Lenin and Trotzky and their followers raised the cry that all power must be given to the Soviets, that is, to the central Soviet and the local and shop Soviets affiliated with it. The Provisional Government was

"capitalistic." That it had a Socialist at its head and that other influential posts in it were held by Socialists, that it had adopted a program of pure democracy, mattered nothing. It was "capitalistic" and would betray the Revolution. The Soviets were workingclass bodies and could be trusted. Upon this they rang the changes, day after day, week after week. In June, when the Provisional Government, with the expressed approval of the Soviets and other organizations of soldiers and workmen, ordered an offensive to be launched, the Bolsheviki were bitter in their denunciations. They preached defeatism among the soldiers and sabotage in the factories. A stronger military Government would have sent most of them to face firing squads.

The Provisional Government was fully aware of the nature of the Bolshevist propaganda. The leaders of the latter had tried to get control of the Workmen's and Soldiers' Soviet, but failed. Then they proceeded to discredit it. They hatched a plot to arrest the members of the Provisional Government on the 24th of June, while the attention of everybody was centered upon the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, which would then be in session. All the troops were to be withdrawn from the trenches at once, without any negotiations or delay. The plot was discovered and revealed. The Bolshevist leaders-Lenin and Trotzky among the

number-apologized and promised to abandon all such

attempts.

On July 1st, the great offensive was launched and 't began to appear that Kerensky had performed the niracle of restoring the morale of the Russian army. Then came the results of the Bolshevist propaganda. Regiment after regiment refused to obey orders. Officers were murdered by their troops, over a front one hundred and fifty miles long the Germans advanced, unmolested, while the Russians, whose numbers were far greater, steadily and sullenly retreated. In the midst of this crisis, on July 17, the Bolsheviki tried to seize the reins of Government. There was fighting in the streets of Petrograd for two days and more than five hundred men, women and children lost their lives. Even after this, as we have already noted, the measures taken against the Bolsheviki were exceedingly mild.

From that time to the fateful seventh of November the heroic, but in some respects pathetically weak and futile Kerensky, and his associates fought desperately to preserve the Revolution as a great democratic gain, but they fought a losing fight against overwhelming odds. War weariness, and exhaustion, treason and treachery, bewilderment of the masses, lack of a powerful and resourceful bourgeoisie, inadequate and pitifully weak leadership-these were the elements of the problem.

Even now we are too close to the scene of turmoil and confusion to make possible judgments of more than tentative value concerning the work of Kerensky and his associates in the Provisional Government. Sometimes Kerensky looms up like a figure of heroic mould. Then the picture changes and we see him as a weakling who reminds us of Bismarck's description of Lord Salisbury as "a lath of wood painted to look like iron." Had Kerensky something of that decisive force and iron sternness which Trotzky has shown in his military direction of the Soviet regime, would the result have been otherwise? To that and similar questions posterity will reply with greater certitude than we can.

What is certain is that day by day the Revolution drifted to the fate that overcame it. Preparations for the elections to the Constituent Assembly went on. A Pre-Parliament, the most representative democratic body that Russia had ever known, met week after week and debated and decided and then debated again. But there seemed to be no strong purpose, nor any daring resourcefulness except on the part of the Bolsheviki.

By October it was evident that the Bolsheviki had greatly increased their strength, and that the other elements and parties which had supported the Provisional Government had lost a not inconsiderable part