But what of the war outside Russia? Why could not the Russians be allowed to conduct their revolution and settle their form of government by themselves? It would be very desirable if they could. And doubtless it is the aim to be striven for. But the trouble is that Bolshevism is to its adherents a revelation and a new gospel, and they have the same zeal for converting the rest of the world as had the French Revolutionaries or the followers of Mohammed. "The program of the Communist Party is not merely a program of liberating the proletariate of one country; it is the program of liberating the proletariate of the world" (authorized pamphlet by N. Bukharin, July 24, 1918). This is to be achieved by "a bloody torturing and heroic fight." The methods are to include every known form of intrigue, corruption, forgery, and the like, and the plan is to be the same in all countries. Revolutionary workmen are to be armed, including common soldiers, tramps, prisoners, and all the utterly dispossessed of the earth, except, of course, those who have Conservative, Liberal, or Labour Party views; and then are to work their proletarian will on the rest of the community. The "national will" is to be disregarded: "The interests of Socialism stand far above the interest of the right of nations to self-determination" (Trotzky, _Izvestia_, March 8, 1918). "All our hopes for the definitive triumph of Socialism are based on this conviction and on this scientific prevision, i.e. that a revolution like the Russian can be produced in all the nations of Europe" (_ib._). In the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk the Bolsheviks were compelled to sign a clause promising not to conduct "any agitation against the State and military institutions of Germany." "But both the Russian Government as a whole and its accredited representative in Berlin never concealed the fact that they were not observing this article, and did not intend to do so" (Joffe, _Izvestia_, January 1, 1919). The belief that by some single violent change in social, political, or economic conditions human life as a whole can be suddenly transfigured is one that clings to many minds, and by no means the stupidest minds, of the present age, in spite of much disillusioning experience. It does seem to them at moments as if only some one thing was wrong with the world, and as if that one flaw must surely be definite and remediable: some one bold step is all that is needed--say, the abolition of the family, or of property, or of competition, or of wages, or of interest, or of compulsory law, or some other of the fundamental institutions of society.