What will happen next in that distracted country? Into what new morass are the people being led? Frankly, I do not know. I do not know anybody who does. The only analogous situation in modern history is that of the Poland of the eighteenth century. Poland had a government quite as bad as that of the Russian Soviets, or Council of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates. Instead of being an all-socialist affair Poland’s parliament was made up entirely of noblemen. These men were so proud, so “free” in the New Russia sense of the word that they wouldn’t yield on any question even to a majority vote. A single dissenting voice in their parliament was enough to kill any measure. The people of Poland had no more to say about government than the middle class and the rich have in the Russia of to-day. And when a European war on a limited scale broke out, and Frederick the Great started the era of frightfulness which William the last thought he could bring to a triumphant conclusion, the three great eastern powers of Europe--Russia, Prussia and Austria--sliced up Poland and handed each of the three monarchs a piece. Maria Theresa, who ruled the Austria of that day, wanted it printed in the records that she wept when she took her piece, but she took it just the same, and Poland has wept ever since. This could happen to Russia. She could be dismembered and handed around. But this is not likely to happen. The Allies would never be so foolish or so cruel as to permit it to happen. Russia could fall apart and become an aggregation of small separate states, but each one of those would still have its Soviets, and consequently a government without stability or permanence. Finland and the Ukraine are two Russian states which are trying to bring about this end, and they may succeed, but a dissected Russia would furnish such good material for future wars that the Allies can hardly afford to consent to it. Civil war is a fine possibility in Russia just now, except that there seems to be no one at hand to organize the two forces. The strongest probability is more guerilla warfare, more street fighting, more motor trucks loaded with machine guns rushing up and down Petrograd, more battle, murder and sudden death, and then the reaction. Just what form the reaction will take nobody knows. But the mad Bolsheviki know that it is coming, and though they almost court it they also fear it. They call this inevitable reaction the counter revolution, and they excuse all their vagaries, their obstinacy, their pig-headed resistance to a coalition with non-socialists on the ground that they are fighting the counter revolution. I have heard Americans in Russia, college professors, business men, correspondents, even members of American commissions, say: “Don’t blame these people too much for their radicalism. They are afraid they will lose all they gained by the revolution. They fear the return of autocracy.”