The fundamental weakness of the Soviet Union and the root of all its evil is the fact that the Bolsheviks believe and practice as their first rule of political conduct that the end justifies the means. This rule led to adoption of the Terror as the chief weapon in the struggle to establish Socialism, and the Terror in turn made it impossible to establish Socialism. The Terror destroyed democracy. Without political democracy, the vaunted economic democracy of the Soviet Union became a farce. Constant coercion of the masses through the Terror benumbed them. Production was concentrated on war materials and the output of consumption goods never rose above subsistence level. The Soviet Union became a permanent pauper state. The level from the standpoint of culture and comfort remained barbarian, but the Russians showed they had the virtues of barbarians. When the time came to fight they proved they could stand up better to their Nazi brother barbarians than any of the civilized folk of Europe. The principle that the end justifies the means works in wartime as it is a barbarous principle and war is a barbarous business, and that is one reason why the Russians have done as well as they have against the Germans. In peacetime the principle that the end justifies the means defeats itself because peaceful processes are not promoted by violence. The Bolsheviks used the Terror to force every member of the vast community of Russia into a pattern of National Planned Economy, but after thirteen years of watching the Five-Year plans, now in the midst of the Third, we can scan the whole Russian scene and soberly observe that National Planned Terror plus Bolshevik zeal have not been able to produce anything like as much for the whole population as free capitalist economy running on the profit motive with a competitive labor market. I am not for Hoover capitalism, but even it is incomparably better than Stalin’s economy. Q. _What authority have you to speak about Russia?_