that it would be felt at once throughout the world and cause such reverberations as would paralyze industry everywhere. And that is why, although Russia is an agricultural country, the Communist plans for her reconstruction are concerned first of all not with agriculture, but with industry. In their schemes for the future of the world, Russia's part is that of a gigantic farm, but in their schemes for the immediate future of Russia, their eyes are fixed continually on the nearer object of making her so far self-supporting that, even if Western Europe is unable to help them, they may be able to crawl out of their economic difficulties, as Krassin put it to me before he left Moscow, "if necessary on all fours, but somehow or other, crawl out." Some idea of the larger ambitions of the Communists with regard to the development of Russia are given in a conversation with Rykov, which follows this chapter. The most important characteristic of them is that they are ambitions which cannot but find an echo in Russians of any kind, quite regardless of their political convictions. The old anomalies of Russian industry, for example, the distances of the industrial districts from their sources of fuel and raw material are to be done away with. These anomalies were largely due to historical accidents, such as the caprice of Peter the Great, and not to any economic reasons. The revolution, destructive as it has been, has at least cleaned the slate and made it possible, if it is possible to rebuild at all, to rebuild Russia on foundations laid by common sense. It may be said that the Communists are merely doing flamboyantly and with a lot of flag-waving, what any other Russian Government would be doing in their place. And without the flamboyance and the flag-waving, it is doubtful whether in an exhausted country, it would be possible to get anything done at all. The result of this is that in their work of economic reconstruction the Communists get the support of most of the best engineers and other technicians in the country, men who take no interest whatsoever in the ideas of Karl Marx, but have a professional interest in doing the best they can with their knowledge, and a patriotic satisfaction in using that knowledge for Russia. These men, caring not at all about Communism, want to make Russia once more a comfortably habitable place, no matter under what Government. Their attitude is precisely comparable to that of the officers of the old army who have contributed so much to the success of the new. These officers were not Communists, but they disliked civil war, and fought to put an end of it. As Sergei Kamenev, the Commander-in-Chief, and not a Communist, said to me, "I have not looked on the civil war as on a struggle between two political ideas, for the Whites have no definite idea. I have considered it simply as a struggle between the Russian Government and a number of mutineers." Precisely so do these "bourgeois" technicians now working