An army that will obey orders; a government that will govern; leaders in business, in transportation, in agriculture and a people willing to obey those leaders; education, wholesome life. Russia needs all these, and in her coming mighty struggle to achieve them the whole world of democracy, and especially our United States, must lend willing and sympathetic help and guidance. CHAPTER XXV WHAT NEXT? Man must hope. He must believe that his fight is a winning fight or he must give up in despair. That is why the Americans place credence in every despatch from Russia which seems to indicate that the disorganized fighting forces are being whipped into form again. That is why any hint that Kerensky had not succeeded in restoring order in the empire was for some time received with incredulity by the reading public. But why refuse to face the facts? We must face them some time. In late September I read in one of the newspapers a headline which stated that the so-called democratic congress then in session in Petrograd had voted to sustain Kerensky’s demand for a coalition ministry. The headlines were wrong. What the dispatch really stated was that the congress had voted not to form any coalition with the bourgeois element, or with members of the Constitutional Democratic party. That is, the congress would not support a ministry that had any non-socialist members in it. “All the power to the Soviets” was retired as too conservative a slogan. It was “all the power to the Bolsheviki” then, for that is precisely what the vote in that so-called Democratic Congress meant. Since June, 1917, no fewer than six congresses or conventions have been held in Russia with the object of finding a way out of the chaos with which the country is threatened. Every one of them was hailed beforehand as the one which was going to be a revelation of the intentions and desires of the people. The most important of these was the all-Russia congress of Soviets held last July, and before that the preliminary convention to prepare for the constituent assembly. The one was to decide once and for all whether or not the moderate or the extreme element in the Soviets was to rule, and the other was to quiet both elements by showing that the government intended to prepare a liberal and a democratic constitution for them to debate, amend and adopt when the time came. Lastly, there was the great Moscow congress of last August. I don’t remember what the stated object of that congress was, but it does not matter much. The real object was to find out which was the stronger man, Kerensky or Korniloff. Kerensky won by a narrow margin, a very narrow margin. And then they held another convention, and Kerensky lost.