They will also seem more desperate; not because it is their natural character to be desperate but because they face as desperate a problem as ever strained the human brain. They have been caught, from the first, on the horns of the revolutionary dilemma. The same intolerable breakdown of economic life, which alone makes revolution possible, also predestines revolution to almost certain failure. That dull beast, the public, will move to revolution only when life has become unbearable, only when the established order has broken down so completely that ruins alone remain. Revolution does not come before ruin. And to build on ruins a new and fairer life is a task almost beyond the powers of men. So much of the exhausted energy of the nation must be consumed in re-establishing the mere fundamentals of life--food, shelter, clothing and security from fear--that little remains to attack the task of remoulding life in a shape that is closer to the heart’s desire. But to this task the leaders of Russia have dedicated their lives. And if they succeed or if they fail, they will be remembered always for their courage in following an ideal through destruction, famine, death and the hatred of the world. Here, then, they are: the Russians of to-day: close to the Tartar and the Cossack of the plain, children of serfs and Norsemen and Mongols--close to the earth and striving for the stars. LOUISE BRYANT. LENIN AND HIS SUBORDINATES NIKOLAI LENIN CHRISTIAN RAKOVSKY ABRAHAM KRASNICHAKOV LEO KAMINEV AND GREGORY ZINOVIEV PETER STOOTCHKA ALIEXIEV IVANOVITCH RYKOV [Illustration: LENIN] LENIN AND HIS SUBORDINATES NIKOLAI LENIN Lenin became an active revolutionist through the spiritual motives that have moved all great reformers--not because he himself was hungry and an outcast, but because he could not stand by unmoved in a world where other men were hungry and outcast. Such characters are predestined internationalists; the very quality that lifts them above materialism places them above borders and points of geography; they strive for the universal good. Lenin believes that the only thing worth living for is the next generation. Communism is his formula for saving the next generation from the injustices and inequalities of the present. When I think of Lenin and his place in the Russian revolution I am reminded of a statue which, until the late Fall of the year 1918, adorned the busy square before the entrance to the Nikoliavski station in Petrograd. It represented one of the former rulers of Russia astride a huge stallion. One could not fail to be struck by the tremendous strength of the animal and the frailty of the rider. The contrast was intentional; the titled sculptor meant to warn his sovereign of the dangers threatening the throne. Russia was the wild horse, fierce, untamed, powerful, a force as yet unaroused but which might wake up any moment and cast off its royal burden.