A third reason for the strength of the Russian resistance is that the Red Army for the past twenty-three years has received a larger share of the national income in peacetime than any other defense force of any nation has ever enjoyed, including Germany. Though Russia starved, the Red Army ate well. On the four occasions--1925-1927, 1930, 1934, and 1937--when I visited the Soviet Union and worked there as a correspondent, I noticed that no matter how poorly the rest of the population was dressed, Red Army soldiers always wore good uniforms and strong leather boots. This was because ever since the Soviet Union was born, every leader from Lenin and Trotzky to Stalin was profoundly convinced that “the capitalist world will never permit the Socialist State to exist and some day will seek to destroy us.” Of course this attack of Hitler’s is not the attack of the capitalist world upon the Socialist State, and the Socialist State now finds the capitalist world its only ally. Nevertheless the unshakable and correct Bolshevik belief in inevitable war led the regime to impose the greatest sacrifices upon the people for the sake of the armed forces, and even though the Soviet economy was most backward, the enormous amounts expended were bound to have effect. Even in American terms the Soviet defense budget was large. In 1940 it was the equivalent of $11,000,000,000, and represented one-third of the national expenditure. Measure this against the fact that the infinitely richer United States will approximate the expenditure of that much yearly only in 1942 after two years of our greatest defense effort. Most of the money spent on the Red Army and Air Force went for machines of war. Twenty-three years ago when the Bolshevik revolution took place there were few machines in Russia. Marx said Communism must come in a highly industrialized society. The Bolsheviks identified their dreams of socialist happiness with machines which would multiply production and reduce hours of labor until everyone would have everything he needed and would work only as much as he wished. Somehow this has not come about, but the Russians still worship machines, and this helped make the Red Army the most highly mechanized in the world, except perhaps the German Army now. Like Americans, the Russians admire size, bigness, large numbers. They took pride in building a vast army of tanks, some of them the largest in the world, armored cars, airplanes, motorized guns, and every variety of mechanical weapon. Their quality was seldom the best. Few things produced in the Soviet Union have attained high quality, but the attempt is made to compensate by quantity.