of political exiles in the Siberian mines was probably better in his days than it was in 1825.

From that time and right up to the events of 1917 and the outbreak of the Revolution the Russian Intellectuals have played the most conspicuous part In the struggle for the political and social emancipation of the Russian people. Their one political weakness has been their extreme 'idealism' and want of cohesion.

Deprived of political significance and refused the most elementary civic rights, the Russian Intellectuals were driven to extremes in their struggle for political recognition and participation in the government of their country. Hence it is we find that nearly all the revolutionary impulses in Russia have been more of a political than a socialeconomic character. Hence also the enthusiasm of the young Russian Intellectuals in the early 'forties' for the teachings of Saint-Simon, Fourier, Proudhon, and other extreme Socialists, and their revived interest in the French eighteenth century Encyclopædists. Their tendencies toward Socialism were fostered and increased by the widespread fermentation caused by the great rapidity of changes in the structure of Russian society, apart from the stimulus they received from without. The extreme form of centralization which characterized the political life of Russia in those days was reflected in the smallest details of community and family life, and this led to what may be called a revolt of the individual against communal guaranty and patriarchalism so well described by Turgueniev in his Fathers and Children. The revolt became more and more intense, as Prince Kropotkin says in his memoirs:

During the years 1860-1865 in nearly every wealthy family a bitter struggle was

going on between the fathers, who wanted to maintain the old traditions, and the sons and daughters, who defended their right to dispose of their lives according to their own ideals.

It is all the more difficult to understand the peculiar idiosyncrasies of the Russian Intellectuals as a class, because the origin and history of Western European Intelligentsia has been so entirely different. Broadly speaking the Intelligentsia of Western Europe derives its origin from and naturally sympathizes with the bourgeoisie, hence its apparent tendency to range itself against the proletariat and its antagonism to Socialism.

In the history of Russia vastly different political and economic conditions have produced just the opposite result. Neither in their sympathies nor in their interests have the Russian Intellectuals ever been inclined toward the bourgeoisie, perhaps because what we might call the small bourgeoisie has never existed as a class in Russia, hence the advent of Socialism in that country would not produce the same economic disturbance as elsewhere. Further the 'Intellectuals' are the only Socialists in Russia, or rather only Intellectuals are Socialists. The peasants have no leanings whatever toward Socialism and the workingmen in Russia, as elsewhere, have but the crudest ideas about it. As a result of the discontent caused by the fact that they were deprived of any political influence on the government, and thereby driven into active resistance, the very attitude of the Russian Intellectuals toward life and the evolution of society became entirely different from that of similar groups in Western Europe. The existence of political despotism and ecclesiastical stagnation in Russia diverted the mind of the Russian Intellectual from political and ecclesiastical spheres to purely intellectual and moral spheres, and

drove him further and further from what seemed to him the sordid materialism of the peasants. Hence, perhaps, his extraordinary enthusiasm for Socialist doctrines, hence his peculiar sense of freedom and that indifference to tradition which seem to mark him off from Westerners of similar education, among whom political interests are predominant.

Yet this is the man whom the Bolsheviki accuse of being a reactionary, and a potential danger to liberated Russia. They cannot be sincere in their accusation, and there must be some other reason why Lenine wishes to destroy the influence of the Russian Intellectuals, and to prevent them by every means of torture and tyranny from playing a part in the political reconstruction of Russia. He has endeavored to base his policy of destruction on class interests and the necessity of class warfare in order to safeguard the interests of the urban proletariat. Neither he nor his followers have ever taken into consideration the interests of the rural proletariat, yet the latter is by far the more numerous and important in Russia. The Bolsheviki are endeavoring to rule over Russia by relying on the support of an aggressive and armed minority, banded together by an iron discipline such as was unknown in the army of the Tsar, and on that of a horde of mercenaries, Letts, and Chinese, whose high pay is still further supplemented by the right to murder, ravish, and pillage wherever they go.

The Bolsheviki realize but too well that the Russian Intellectuals will never tolerate a régime far more tyrannical than that of any former Tsar imposed upon them by political adventurers and maniacs who, in the majority of cases, cannot even claim to be Russians, and must needs hide their real names of doubtful honesty

VOL. 15-NO. 736

under Russian pseudonyms. The Intellectuals who fought, bled, and died for the cause of freedom in the days when Russia was held in the grip of bureaucratic oppression have left their legacy of love and sacrifice for the same cause to the Russian Intellectuals of the present day, and these will not prove unworthy of their predecessors. Insidious rumors have been circulated among the working classes in this country that the Bolsheviki represent the Russian people and that those Russians who oppose their rule are reactionary members of the 'Black Hundred' anxious to restore autocracy and to reintroduce the old system of political and economic pressure. The short summary of the political evolution of the Russian Intelligentsia which I have just set down proves how unfounded and unjust are these accusations whose sole object is to discredit the Intellectuals by making them out to be members of an exclusive and aristocratic class, hostile to the revolution and the rights of the people, something like Prussian Junkers. As a matter of fact there has never been what might properly be called a self-conscious class in Russia, for no class of Russian society has acted for any length of time or with any degree of interior cohesion. As we have seen, the Intelligentsia is now drawn from all classes. Up to 1861, the year of the emancipation of the Russian peasantry, the members of the Intelligentsia were mostly drawn from the aristocracy and the clergy, but after that date it was quickly and permanently democratized by those Intellectuals who sprang from the people when the legal barriers fell. But before 1861, as well as after, the one aim of the Intellectuals has been the liberation of the Russian people from politi-. cal slavery. During their struggle against autocracy they have often lacked perspective in their view of

society, and have been carried away by fanantical enthusiasm giving them selves up to futile visions or violent action in order to obtain immediate results. They have been found wanting in political experience and constructive statesmanship, and by their want of cohesion they have jeopardized the beneficial results of the Russian revolution. All this is true of the Russian Intellectuals, but all this is a direct result of Russian conditions of society for centuries past, and the blame is not entirely theirs. On the other hand, what an enormous debt the world owes to these same Russian Intellectuals, whose spiritual forces have made themselves felt so tremendously in the realms of thought and art. All that is great and noble, inspiring and uplifting in Russia's literature, in her music, in every form of her national art, it is to the soul of her Intelligentsia that she owes it. When their genius was not trammeled by regulations and ukases

The Glasgow Herald

the Russian Intellectuals showed themselves equal, if not superior, to the Intellectuals of Western Europe. Why, then, should they be incapable of bringing about order and peace in their afflicted land? We have ignored their claims to our moral sympathy and support simply because we distrusted them, looking upon them as 'dreamers' or idle theoreticians, condemning them before we had examined their case or sought out the cause of their disaster. Yet the one hope of Russia's salvation is in her Intelligentsia. Fortunately for mankind Bolshevism carries within itself the germs of its own destruction, and Russia will survive the ordeal through which she is passing. By her Intellectuals, and thanks to her Intellectuals, Russia will eventually, and let us hope shortly, take that place among the great democracies of the world to which her genius, her idealism, her sufferings for the cause of freedom, entitle her.

HOUSING OR EMIGRATION; A QUESTION FOR BRITAIN

BY HAROLD COX

HITHERTO there seems to have been little public discussion of the Government Housing Bill. Like many of the other measures which the government has hastily knocked together, it is so big that few people have realized its full bearings. Dr. Addison himself has done his best to warn the country of the dangers of a purely State scheme of housing, and has appealed to the fact that before the war 95 per cent of the houses in the country were built by private enterprise. He might have added that as a result of private enterprise there was, up to the time of Mr. Lloyd George's Budget of 1909, a supply of houses in excess of the demand. Partly through the operations of the Land Value Duties, incorporated in that Budget, and partly through the necessary cessation of building during war, there is now a deficiency of houses.

The proposal to make good that deficiency at the cost of the State involves, however, very grave financial and economic dangers. In the first place, the moment the State intervenes, prices rise, both for labor and for materials. In any case building must be dearer to-day than it was before the war, but the cost will certainly be enhanced if contractors and workmen know that the government will pay the bill. Moreover, any government scheme must involve grave injustice as between different areas. It has been well pointed out by the Housing Committee o the London County Council

that the present scheme involves a heavy burden upon the taxpayers of London for the building of houses in Birmingham and other large cities. This is a gross and inexcusable injustice.

More serious still is the consideration that we cannot clearly foresee how many houses we shall want, nor in what places we shall want them. Our industries are in a state of flux. It may be that sanity will return to the leaders of the wage-earning classes when the excitement of the war has quite died down; but at the present moment the demands put forward by the miners in particular will involve such a heavy burden on the other industries of the nation that we shall find ourselves handicapped in our competition with foreign countries. Few people sufficiently realize that the great industrial success of this country throughout the nineteenth century rested very largely upon the possession of cheap coal. When that basis is withdrawn our industrial supremacy may disappear entirely, and if our industrial supremacy goes our industrial population will go too. A similar, but perhaps less serious, danger arises with regard to the location of houses. As far as can be gathered the government scheme foreshadows the further multiplication of houses in existing urban areas. But the most urgent need of our population at the present time is de-urbanization, and probably if manufacturers were left alone they would initiate big schemes for moving some of our industries from the town to the country.

Finally, it must be noted that already a reduction of our population has

begun. In the quarter ended December 31 last, the excess of deaths over births in the United Kingdom was 90,000; in England and Wales for the quarter ended March 31 last, the excess of deaths over births was 47,000. No doubt this decline in the population was partly due to the heavy toll of life taken by the influenza epidemic, but if the steady reduction in the number of births during the previous ten years be noted it will be seen that the growing practice of birth control is the really important factor. In view of all these facts it is extremely dangerous to saddle the country with a debt which may amount to many hundreds of millions for building at an excessive cost houses which possibly may not be wanted at all in the future, or will not be wanted in the places where they have been built.

The alternative policy is to do something to reduce the excessive congestion of population in England. and Wales and to make good the shortage of population in a large part of the overseas empire. Take for example Western Australia. Its area is eight times that of the whole of the United Kingdom; yet its population in 1911 was only 282,000, or less than a third of the population of Birmingham alone. Is it better to build more houses in Birmingham or to help to emigrate English folk to Western Australia?

As the Agent-General for Western Australia points out in the Times of May 23, no part of the Empire has a finer record of voluntary enlistment for service in the great war.

Undoubtedly at the present time all the Dominions are a little shy of encouraging immigration from the United Kingdom, partly from fear of labor troubles, partly from the difficulties of providing the means of settlement. If, however, the Government of the United Kingdom, instead of plung

ing recklessly into housing schemes, were to devote even a tenth part of the money which it is proposed to spend upon bricks and mortar to assist the settlement of suitable emigrants in the Dominions, it is more than probable that the movement would be enthusiastically welcomed. Settlers provided with capital sufficient to enable them to make a start in life are a very different proposition to immigrants on the lookout for employment and depressing the labor market.

No doubt the Government of the United Kingdom would have to run some financial risks in thus assisting overseas settlement but there would be at least a chance of recoupment, whereas, the scheme of housing now before Parliament contemplates quite frankly a final loss of an unknown number of millions. Houses are to be built at an extravagant price and to be let at a figure which admittedly will not repay the cost; the loss is to be written off by an addition to the National Debt, leaving posterity to pay for our present political follies. It is obviously better worth while from the financial point of view to incur some risk in advancing money to oversea settlers under an agreement to repay as soon as they have established themselves.

From the human and Imperial point of view the advantages of this alternative policy are even greater. The majority of the inhabitants of Great Britain to-day are living in overcrowded areas, and this fundamental evil will not be mitigated - it may even be accentuated by further enlarging our already over-large towns. On the other hand, within the Dominions there are immense undeveloped regions, and it is a matter of Imperial importance that these vacant spaces should be peopled by the English

race.

The Sunday Times