It is obvious that since this machinery is dominated by a political party, it will be impossible to understand the Russian plans, without understanding that particular political party's estimate of the situation in general. It is obvious that the Communist plans for Russia must be largely affected by their view of Europe as a whole. This view is gloomy in the extreme. The Communists believe that Europe is steadily shaking itself to pieces. They believe that this process has already gone so far that, even given good will on the part of European Governments, the manufacturers of Western countries are already incapable of supplying them with all the things which Russia was importing before the war, still less make up the enormous arrears which have resulted from six years of blockade. They do not agree with M. Clemenceau that "revolution is a disease attacking defeated countries only." Or, to put it as I have heard it stated in Moscow, they believe that President Wilson's aspiration towards a peace in which should be neither conqueror nor conquered has been at least partially realized in the sense that every country ended the struggle economically defeated, with the possible exception of America, whose signature, after all, is still to be ratified. They believe that even in seemingly prosperous countries the seeds of economic disaster are already fertilized. They think that the demands of labor will become greater and more difficult to fulfill until at last they become incompatible with a continuance of the capitalist system. They think that strike after strike, irrespective of whether it is successful or not, will gradually widen the cracks and flaws already apparent in the damaged economic structure of Western Europe. They believe that conflicting interests will involve our nations in new national wars, and that each of these will deepen the cleavage between capital and labor. They think that even if exhaustion makes mutual warfare on a large scale impossible, these conflicting interests will produce such economic conflicts, such refusals of cooperation, as will turn exhaustion to despair. They believe, to put it briefly, that Russia has passed through the worst stages of a process to which every country in Europe will be submitted in turn by its desperate and embittered inhabitants. We may disagree with them, but we shall not understand them if we refuse to take that belief into account. If, as they imagine, the next five years are to be years of disturbance and growing resolution, Russia will get very little from abroad. If, for example, there is to be a serious struggle in England, Russia will get practically nothing. They not only believe that these things are going to be, but make the logical deductions as to the effect of such disturbances on their own chances of importing what they need. For example, Lenin said to me that "the shock of revolution in England would ensure the final defeat of capitalism," but he said at the same time