Marx and Engels always considered violence a subordinate weapon which might eventually be used to give the last stroke to a capitalist régime already undermined and weakened by economic progress. Marx and Engels consistently regarded this gradual internal revolution following the footsteps of economic evolution, the principal and decisive force which would eventually bring to pass socialism. Aside from that, they looked chiefly to the education of the masses for a reform of the social order. Lenin, on the other hand, considers armed revolution the principal constructive force in social progress, and expects it to bring about the final communist régime even in illiterate Russia, where capitalism itself has by no means attained maturity.

So Marx and Engels stood on a scientific and evolutionist platform, while the Bolsheviki stand on an absolutist and anti-scientific platform. The former regarded revolution as more than a process of protest, punishment, and admonition as a constructive and creative force for replacing the old régime by a new and better social state. On the other hand, the Bolsheviki champion a revolution of the old barbarous type, belonging to the outgrown epoch of absolutism and violence.

Lenin, it is true, expects capitalism to be overthrown throughout the world; but that is precisely where he makes his mistake. His notion of human evolution and of national evolution is visionary. His philosophy of history is false. He and his friends have predicted on several occasions the day and hour of the final catastrophe in Europe, and in each instance they have predicted wrong. They now postpone to ever remoter dates the final bankruptcy of existing society, without increasing the plausibility of their pro

phecy. To be sure, Lenin sometimes speaks more in accordance with facts. He cautions Communists from seizing power before the proletariat is ripe for it, and recognizes that the political maturity of the masses varies in different countries and under different surroundings. He even admits: 'Only the political leaders of the proletariat in each country those who have pondered the question and have direct and personal knowledge of local conditions will be able to tell exactly when the proper moment arrives.' And he continues further on: 'Our tactics should be based upon an accurate and well-defined knowledge of the classes of society in each particular country and in the countries which surround these, as well as upon practical experience with revolutionary movements.'

The Bolsheviki are the victims of revolutionary romanticism and mysticism. For them, revolution is a revelation, and for most of them it is literally a fetish. It is an idea which gratifies their intellectual fancy in their present immature state of development. Consequently, to their eyes, revolution is an end in itself. They are incapable of plodding, productive labor. They dream of imaginary exploits and their enthusiasm ends in a flood of empty words. Their hatred of reaction makes them define arbitrarily what reaction is. The Bolsheviki are Russians, and Lenin is constantly asserting that they cannot use the methods of Western nations. Lenin is nearer the truth than he realizes in saying that. The Russians still cherish their old aristocratic prejudices. They disdain plodding labor and persistent effort. The Bolsheviki are true representatives of that lower social order where brutality reigns unchecked. That is why the teaching of Marx and Engels cannot be distorted into conformity with Bolshevist practices.

The Bolsheviki grew up in exile. They have been outlaws. They know only the methods of conspiracy. They have taken over the tradition of a Russian revolution which was terrorist and anarchist in its origin and they cannot free themselves from its obsession. These facts of their history help to explain their administrative failure. Their government is a mere improvisation. They are dilettante rulers, with no thought-out plan and no continuity of policy. Even in these days, Radek is advising the socialists of Western Europe to form secret and illegal societies. Right there you have the difference between Europe and Russia. European Socialists know their minds. They understand the value of plodding labor. They know how to create. They see revolution for what it is, undisguised by any veil of mysticism and romanticism.

From the European standpoint, the Bolshevist Revolution was not necessary. When the Tsar was overthrown and a liberal socialist government was organized, where a constitutional convention elected by 36,000,000 voters showed a large socialist majority, the Bolsheviki should have been content to form a political party with a programme of administrative and educational reform. They might have constituted an opposition in parliament. We must acknowledge that Kerensky's government committed blunders but this did not justify Lenin in committing others. But the Bolsheviki did not know, and they never have known, how to work. They only know how to force others to work. They know how to fight, how to kill, and murder, and die, but they are incapable of plodding, productive labor. That is why their revolution was at the beginning and still continues to be political instead of economic and social. They owe their success to the defeat of the Tsar's army. The moment Lenin pro

claimed that war must stop at any cost, the soldiers flocked to his standard. These soldiers were of two sorts: those

who had seen three years of war, with all its horrors and disasters, who were worn out and demoralized by defeat; and the young and undisciplined recruits of the new army. They were unanimous in applauding Lenin's ultrapacifism. Thanks to them Lenin won. He owed no whit of his success to his masterful knowledge of the weak points in capitalism and the strong points in socialism.

There is one test, and only one, by which we can decide whether or not a revolution is necessary. It is a test which involves both historical expediency and a question of conscience. A revolution means life or death for many men. It is a measure to be adopted only when there is no other recourse, when revolution is the only weapon with which we can successfully defend our liberty and assure our future.

Before the war I studied the question of revolution for many years. I was often accused of dealing with it from too academic a standpoint. That was not quite true; for revolution is always a practical problem, as events have proved. My Thoughts upon the Ethical Aspects of Revolution show that I judged the world's condition aright. I anticipated profound changes. I had a presentiment that I personally might be called upon to decide whether the employment of force was necessary and legitimate. Subsequent events confirmed this presentiment. I organized our national movement, and I led our revolution.

As I have often said before, the responsibility seemed to me no light one. My moral suffering was acute. I was compelled to decide whether conditions promised our revolution a fair prospect of success, and whether that success

justified the human lives it would cost. Furthermore, the head of a revolution must avoid personal risks, in order that his followers may not be bereft of guidance and counsel. I left behind my family, and it was persecuted by the Austrian authorities. But I thought of all that when I made my decision.

By a strange accident, I found myself in the very centre of the Bolshevist uprising. I was in Petrograd and Moscow and Kieff when shells were flying. I lived ten days at the Hôtel Métropole in Moscow, where bullets and shrapnel frequently struck my windows. I had the same experience later at Kieff. I did not fear for myself; I could take care of myself during those bloody days. But I have suffered sleepless days and nights while thinking that I must make decisions sure to cost the lives of others, and after receiving news of the death and sufferings of my faithful followers. So I can discuss revolutions not only as a theorist, but as a man who knows that terrible reality.

The life of others ought to be sacred to us. Men should respect the personality of their fellow men. This is the principle upon which the very survival of human beings and of society rests. It should govern the rules of revolution and of war. Revolution is justified only to resist the aggression of a usurper. It should strive to attain its ends with the smallest possible expenditure of life. Right there you have a line which separates the primitive

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civilization of the Russians from our Western civilization. They have always sacrificed life too prodigally, both in their wars and in their revolutions. With my own eyes I have seen Bolshevist crimes in which a purely brutal and bestial barbarism was exhibited. I have been horrified at the uselessness of these massacres. Lenin accuses Kautsky, in one of his arguments, as he accuses the other opponents of the Bolshevist Revolution, of being a coward. He pretends that cowardice is the principal reason for the dislike of Russian revolutionary methods. I share Kautsky's views, not because I am afraid, but because I know conditions in Russia and in Europe. I affirm with full knowledge of their case, and after long reflection, that the Bolsheviki are fatally wrong. First of all, they do not understand that the European nations have reached a state of progress where their moral instincts revolt against violence, and therefore against war and aggressive revolution. The European mind no longer tolerates the idea of war and revolution except in self-defense. Last of all, the Bolsheviki do not understand that their country, in its present backward state, is not ripe for a Communist régime, and that it never can make a success of its revolution.

We have reached the point in Europe where we can bring about such social transformations as are necessary by peaceful means. We do not need a violent revolution; far less do we need Russian terrorism.

STRINDBERG is not merely the greatest writer whose birth Sweden has seen during the last century; he belongs to the literature of the world. He ranks among the heroes, of whom he is perhaps one of the most remarkable, if one will but consider the extent of his work and the universality of his genius.

He bears a relation to all the currents of art and thought. His work is a point of junction where the most diverse streams, tides, surging floods, and even tempests, encounter one another and contend among themselves. There is not a disturbance by which the spiritual atmosphere of his time is stirred, that does not linger in his spirit and there create strange revolutions. Romanticism and naturalism, Darwinism, science both of man and matter, physiology and psychology, history, religion, mysticism and magic, Ibsen and Kierkegaard, Björnson, Jonas Lie, Zola and Maupassant, Huysmans and Péladan, Charcot, Taine, Renan, Nietzsche, systems, doctrines, temperaments and beings, everything that comes to light, that breathes and creates, enter, subjugate, and with their vigor animate this eager mind, which opposes no obstacle to the torrent of its ideas and passions.

Theories entered into the very fibre of Strindberg and renewed the substance of his mental life. The men whose works he read took possession of him. He was the stubborn prisoner of friendship, of admiration, and of devotion, which, however, were not slow in changing to hate. He believed that the

soul of Edgar Allen Poe lived again in him. A similarity in their haughty pride, and perhaps a kind of tragic likeness, linked him with the author of Zarathustra. He kept up an immense correspondence. This very prodigality, which so often gave everything to everybody, ended in a sort of nihilism which no longer numbered its enemies.

I believe that we should have to go back to Voltaire for another example of an activity so measureless, a curiosity so insatiable, a mind which touched the interests of its age at so many points. The comparison is in some respects superficial, for we must admit a gulf of striking contrast between the two, although Strindberg had, like the seigneur of Ferney, manifested the most diverse and highest ambitions, having determined to deal with his time through the novel, through criticism, through poetry, through drama, and through the newspapers, as a reformer of manners and of religion, a political and social innovator.

The philosopher's endeavor is to integrate the values of his age. Strindberg assembles, rejects, and never hoards up ideas. Like a public square forever ringing with all the rumors that spring up and die away, his brain is but a place of passage. All the riches of the world find room there without being definitely domiciled. The poet, so proud of his rich possessions, one succeeding another and always provisory, ends in the posture of Job.

A critic who is sincerely to set a value upon such unusual work should first of

all put these questions to himself: What is the part played here by the influences to which the artist has been subjected, and by his borrowings of every sort? What is the part played by his predeces sors and by his contemporaries? What share in his growth have the scions, snatched living from distant trees, and the wandering seeds blown here and there by the winds? What remains of the art itself when these accretions are taken away? How much has Strindberg himself created? From what sap and with what light has he grown his crop? Precisely where shall we find his originality and his genius?

This task of stripping off accretions is scarcely begun by the critics, and will never be finished, for the complete explanation of Strindberg would require an encyclopædia. His glory suffers now, and will suffer still further in time to come; for these borrowings mask the personal basis of his work. All literatures, and especially French literature, might claim heavy mortgages upon it.

This work, which mingles so many various elements of a violent and often brutal heterogeneity, inspires a kind of distrust in the ordinary reader. Strindberg is the victim of his own abundance, the victim of the multitude of things he remembers, of the reminiscences and comparisons he employs, of the prodigious variety of his literary kaleidoscope, of the immense domains which he arrogates to himself and in which others, living both before him and at the same time with him, claim a legitimate priority of possession.

But is this attitude really justified? It would be glaringly unfair to say so. This limitless receptivity of his is disconcerting, but it would be an error to think that it is the whole of Strindberg's genius, that he scatters his forces, that he is nothing but a stage manager, concerned solely with getting his extraordinary collection of booty on the

stage. No artist is more imperious, stormy, jealous of his personal touch and his independence. Far from being passive, he is in perpetual rebellion against man and the whole universe. His plasticity is merely apparent; rarely does one see personality more sharply outlined, more constant in its affirmation of its fundamental traits, invention bursting forth more spontaneously or more resolutely creative. He who sees nothing but contradiction fails to comprehend Strindberg at all. His power of assimilation must not conceal from us his astounding originality.

The mechanism of his acquisitions deserves also to receive our attention. Strindberg is all action. Though he takes from every source, he receives no gifts, and permits none to be forced on him. His gesture has the violence of a freebooter's. At first he struggles furiously against the influence which he is undergoing. Then he seizes upon it; it is his property; he uses and abuses it. Then he draws away from it in hostility and ingratitude. Look at his successive discoveries. Philosophies, religions, forms of art and of thought explode within him with irresistible violence. Each one is the occasion for a drama in which he remains the chief actor. He will not let himself be led; he has to be given his head and his own way. He dashes into each intellectual adventure with the same fury, pushes it incontinently to its extremes. The end reached, he is ready for a new and dramatic metamorphosis.

Drama is his nature, the drama of feeling and of intellect. He throws all of himself into it, morally, and one might almost say physiologically; he pledges all his powers, his very life, to it. All these crises are so many roads by which he endeavors to reach the unknown roads which he follows for an instant and then gives up in despair among impenetrable shadows. His im