work than workers. This picture changes, however, at the moment the 
destruction is fulfilled and the necessity arises for putting things into 
order somehow. In spite of the great pretensions, and of all the absurd 
complications of the Soviet administrative methods, there are not enough 
positions now in Russia to supply with offices all the amateurs of power 
palpable and clear to the most primitive mind; — now the offer exceeds the 
demand: for not everybody succeeds in finding a place in the Cheka, in 
the “political bureau” and in such like omnipotent administrative institu- 
tions. Unemployment among the former rulers, which had affected numbers 
of people in the higher as well as in the lower strata of the communistic 
party in Russia, is the true reason for that ever growing disorganisation 
which bears the name of struggle of centre against opposition: there 
isn’t enough for every one. 
And what a miraculous change would take place should the bloody 
Bolshevic flag be hoisted, say, above the palace of the Chinese Emperors in the 
inner city of Pekin! What an enormous field, what scope for activity would 
reveal itself! It is the scope the Bolshevics never cease to crave for. To 
possess themselves of this, is a question of life and death for them. What 
is there to be accomplished in such a state of affairs by persuasion, 
exhortation and treaties? The generation that has seen with its own eyes 
during those October days the destruction of a Great Empire under the 
onslaught of a lewd mob, would have to die even to the last man, before 
the idea would dawn on the Moscow rulers that the world was not made for 
them. And how many generations would need to pass away ere this idea 
would become a restraining force! 
While rooting below ground, the Bolshevies are also prepared at any 
moment to fall upon their neighbours in open war, in the hope of setting 
the whole world on fire: that is why they dig at the roots of our civili- 
sation, — at a propitious moment they will exert all their strength in 
attempting to overthrow it. Of course, one cannot tell when and in what 
direction the Bolshevies will make an onslaught, whether it will be directed 
to the East, the West or the South-West, — they do not know it themselves; 
but the bloody storm, which practically raised them from the bottom to the 
crest of the wave, never ceases to fascinate their imagination. And there 
is no good in trying to soothe ones apprehension by saying the Bolshevics 
are to prudent or too cowardly for it. They are even more lascivious than 
cowardly, and as to their prudence, it vanishes whenever there is a chance 
for madness: a reckless gamble is the very essence of Bolshevism. That 
the force of the Bolshevics is not great, that their very chance of success 
is problematic, that is true; but in this fact is little comfort: the great 
danger lies already in the attempt. For who can tell what dangers 
threaten the world still unsettled after the great shock. should peace at 
~~ 
72x 
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