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 n. 'racle 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 Bol

sheviki.

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

of their following. In the election of delegates to the Congress of Soviets, which was to open on November 7, the Bolsheviki had, for the first time, obtained an apparent majority. They had announced in their press that the opening of the Congress would be the signal for an armed uprising; it was charged that they had prevented the holding of elections in many places, that they had intimidated voters, that they had, in many instances, put forward their nominees as antiBolsheviks and so secured their election by fraud. But whatever the truth concerning these charges, the fact remains that they had an apparent majority in the Congress.

On the night of November 6, the coup d'etat took place. Almost without bloodshed, the Provisional Government was overthrown. The Bolsheviki had organized its supporters as Red Guards, and placed these, under military leadership, at strategic points. They occupied the principal government buildings, the telegraph and telephone offices. Part of the Petrograd garrison turned out and supported the Bolsheviki, the other part simply looking on and refusing to participate at all. On the morning of November 7 the members of the Provisional Government were arrested, Kerensky, however, escaping. The Bolsheviki had not met the resistance upon which they had reckoned. A new Government was formed, with Lenin

as President and Trotzky as Foreign Minister. The Soviet regime had begun. Bolshevism was in the saddle in one of the greatest nations in the world.

VI

There was probably not a statesman in Europe, or anywhere in the world for that matter, who believed on November 8, 1917, that the new Russian Government, called the Council of People's Commissaries, which had been proclaimed the day before, could last beyond the end of the year. Its own most influential members were scarcely more optimistic. An American who saw Lenin frequently in those days and enjoyed his confidence has reported that he often referred to the Paris Commune in terms which suggested that he looked upon the Soviet regime as an episode of the same kind. The Paris Commune lasted seventy days. "In (so and so many) days we shall have lasted as long as the Commune," Lenin would say. When the Soviet regime had lasted seventy days he exclaimed. "We have equalled the Commune." After that he

often observed "This is the .... day. We have survived longer than the Commune!"

There is an abundance of authoritative evidence to show that the Soviet leaders did not regard themselves as being called upon to establish anything like a permanent State. Numerous utterances by Lenin,

Trotzky, and others, show that they thought of their task as being much simpler, namely, just to hold things together in Russia for a few short weeks until the general European revolution could take place. "Russia is very backward industrially, and of all the important countries of Europe it is the least prepared for Socialism," Lenin told his followers. "If we depended upon ourselves alone, and undertook to build a Socialist State upon the existing economic and cultural basis of Russia, our situation would be quite hopeless. As it is, we have quite another task. Our problem is simply to hold on for a short time, perhaps only a few weeks, but at most only a few months, until the inevitable revolution throughout Europe and America presents to the entire proletariat of the world the real task of achieving Socialism upon the basis of capitalist civilization, and with all the resources of the latter available for the purpose.'

There was no influential leader of the Bolsheviki who took a longer view than this. There was not one who expressed any doubt that the general social revolution was imminent and that it would sweep all Europe. Their Marxist philosophy had prepared the way for this attitude of mind by teaching them to look for, and to depend upon, a great cataclysm. A catastrophic break-up of capitalist civilization, and the emergence of Socialism through the conscious will