A. It is the sort of communism anyone would approve if it could work in peacetime, though it seems that it really works only in war. In wartime the motive that makes men work is defense of their lives, their families, their nation, against an enemy from without. This leads to a degree of self-sacrifice that is never even approximated in peacetime. Witness the invariable collapse of national morale after every war. One of the chief reasons, if not the chief reason, why communism in peacetime does not work, either in Russia or anywhere else, is because except under the duress of war, individuals primarily work for themselves. The Russian Bolshevik party tried for twenty-three years to make the Russians work for the community, but they never succeeded until now, when they have gone to war. No matter how the Battle of Russia turns out, when the war is over, if the Soviet Union is still Communist, it will revert to its accustomed slackness and poverty. If the British were to try to continue their wartime socialism into peacetime, they would find it impossible. Strikes would break out; employers would begin to reach out for profits and soon the old-time, though modified capitalism would return, with many of its faults, but still far more productive than peacetime communism anywhere in the world. Capitalism in peace; collectivism in war appears to be the law for democracies in our time. 5. FRANCE Q. _Why did France fall?_ A. Because the French people were hypnotized by their low birth rate; because their Maginot line had imprisoned their army; because, ignorant of the character and intentions of their enemy, they did not know why they had to fight the Germans and so preferred to fight among themselves; because they had no Churchill; because they were betrayed by a powerful group of their leaders including senior officers of the Army; and because the French were stultified by their debased and venal press. Q. _But I thought they lost chiefly because they lacked the proper weapons: airplanes and tanks._ A. They did not possess anything like the number of tanks and airplanes used by the Germans; but I would rank this deficiency at the bottom of any list of causes of the French defeat. If they had ignored their birth rate, been willing to spend lives, had retained the old offensive spirit traditional in the French Army, had known that they had to win or perish, had possessed a Churchill to inspire and lead them, and had had no traitors in their ranks, their comparative lack of weapons would not have mattered; they would still be fighting the Germans in France. The inferiority of their equipment consisted, as you indicate, in the lack of a sufficient number of planes and tanks, but if they had had the spirit to win they could have held the Germans until the deficiency could be made up.