But political incompetency is not a reason sufficiently weighty in itself to account for the remarkable revulsion of public feeling against the revolutionary party. Behind the narrow political issue lay the larger philosophical and moral one; and it was the discovery by the country of the real character and ultimate aims of the party which for a few months in 1906 seized the reins of power that will alone provide a sufficient explanation of one of the most astonishing political debacles of modern history. The revolution was nothing less than an attempt by a small minority of theorists and moral anarchists to force Western civilisation upon Russia, and not Western civilisation as it actually is but a sort of abstract "Westernism" derived from books. For the revolutionaries were far more Western than the Westerns. They had not merely swallowed wholesale the latest and most extreme political and social fads, picked up from the literature of England, France, and Germany, but they possessed a courage of their convictions and a will to carry them out to the logical conclusion which many "advanced thinkers" of the West lack. They were not modernists or new theologians but atheists, not Fabians or social reformers but revolutionary socialists armed with bombs, not radicals but republicans, not divorce-law-reformers but "free lovers." A remarkable book was published in 1910 called _Landmarks_. It was written by a number of disillusioned revolutionaries, and gives a vivid picture of the effect which the foregoing principles had upon the lives of those who upheld them. Here is one extract: "In general, the whole manner of life of the _intelligentsia_ was terrible; a long abomination of desolation, without any kind or sort of discipline, without the slightest consecutiveness, even on the surface. The day passes in doing nobody knows what, to-day in one manner, and to-morrow, as a result of a sudden inspiration, entirely contrariwise--everyone lives his life in idleness, slovenliness, and a measureless disorder--chaos and squalor reign in his matrimonial and sexual relations--a naïve absence of conscientiousness distinguishes his work; in public affairs he shows an irrepressible inclination towards despotism, and an utter absence of consideration towards his fellow-creatures; and his attitude towards the authorities of the State is marked at times by a proud defiance, and at others (individually and not collectively) by compliance."