Trotzky in comforting language explained that the object of the mass terror was not really the extermination of all non-communists, or all Russians who did not attain the full standard of poverty and orthodoxy. "The proletariate says: 'I shall break your will because my will is stronger than yours, and I shall force you to serve me.' . . . Terror as the demonstration of the will and strength of the working class is historically justified" (Trotzky in _Izvestia_, January 10, 1919). Eventually, of course, when all Russia was submissive and all Europe Communist, there would be a gentler régime, and the proletariate would show their true beauty of character. And it would be a mistake to ignore the real reforms which seem to have been carried through in certain social services, notably in the care of children, the attempt to develop popular education and the putting down of drink. But in the meantime terror was reënforced by ingenious petty persecutions and indignities, reënforced by starvation. Those who joined the Red Army had three times the ration of food allowed to several categories of the civil population. No one can wonder that suicide--that last irrefutable evidence of unbearable oppression--became extraordinarily common, especially among the educated classes,[4] and that "frantic resistance" broke out where it had any prospect of success. [Footnote 4: The remnants of the more distinguished "intellectuals" are now gathered into two or three "salvage houses" and looked after by Maxim Gorky. [He has now fled.]] II. RUSSIA'S NEIGHBOURS