to be desirable and even essential. For what is this possession of the power and machinery of the state desired? For no constructive purpose of any sort or kind whatever, if we may believe Lenin, but only for destruction and oppression. In his little book, _The State and the Revolution_, written in September, 1917, he says: “As the state is only a transitional institution which we must use in the revolutionary struggle _in order forcibly to crush our opponents_, it is a pure absurdity to speak of a Free People’s State. While the proletariat still needs the state, _it does not require it in the interests of freedom, but in the interests of crushing its antagonists_.” Here, then, is the brutal doctrine of the state as an instrument of coercion and repression which the arch Bolshevist acknowledges; a doctrine differing from that of Treitschke and other Prussians only in its greater brutality. The much-discussed Code of Labor Laws of the Soviet Government, with its elaborate provisions for a permanent conscription of labor upon an essentially military basis, is the logical outcome of the Bolshevist conception of the state. The statement has been made by many of the apologists of the Bolsheviki that the conscription of labor, which has been so unfavorably commented upon in the western nations, is a temporary measure only, introduced because of the extraordinary conditions prevailing. It has been stated, by Mr. Lincoln Eyre among others, that it was adopted on the suggestion of Mr. Royal C. Keely, an American engineer who was employed by Lenin to make an expert report upon Russia’s economic position and outlook, and whose report, made in January of this year, is known to have been very unfavorable. A brief summary of the essential facts will show (1) that the Bolsheviki had this system in mind from the very first, and (2) that quite early they began to make tentative efforts to introduce it. When the Bolsheviki appeared at the convocation of the Constituent Assembly and demanded that that body adopt a document which would virtually amount to a complete abdication of its functions, that document contained a clause--Article II, Paragraph 4--which read as follows: “To enforce general compulsory labor, in order to destroy the class of parasites, and to reorganize the economic life.” In April, 1918, Lenin wrote: