I suppose no gambler who stakes his all upon a single throw against great odds and wins was ever so astonished as the Bolsheviks when they came into power in 1917. They went into Russia like good revolutionists to make trouble and die. They found themselves presently in scarcely disputed possession of a completely exhausted country. Even in 1920 they seemed still a little incredulous to find themselves still there. Never was there such rant and nonsense as the stuff Mr. Winston Churchill, for example, talks about the Bolsheviks seizing upon and ruining Russia. So far from seizing, there was nothing to oppose them but brigands and hopelessly incapable military adventurers, and so far from ruining, the ruin was already complete. In this chaos the Bolsheviks grasped power, according to all the accepted revolutionary examples. There was not so much an organised resistance to their seizure as a lawless disregard. They had to shoot. All revolutionists have to shoot. It is their privilege and their danger. But it is usually conceded that the Bolsheviks shot too much and went on shooting too long, and acquired almost a habit of shooting. It is not that they were bloodthirsty men, but that they were inexperienced and unprepared. They murdered in a fit of Russian nerves. And they were equally inexperienced and unprepared for the task of government, once their power was secure. They served Russia well in defending her from France, Poland, Churchill, Kolchak, Judenitch, Deniken, Wrangel, and all the evil horde that beset her from without, but they rebuilt within slowly and experimentally and wastefully. And they had the bad luck of two famine years. Still, they are on their feet now; they are making headway, and it is from the red root of Communist theory that the new Russian order will grow. It is manifestly destined to be a very great system, a United States in the Old World, stretching from the Baltic to the Pacific.