Not political democracy, as with us; economic democracy is the idea; democracy in the shop, factory, business. Bolshevism is a literal interpretation, the actual application of this theory, policy, or program. And so, in the destructive period of the Russian revolution, the Bolshevik leaders led the people to destroy the very ancient system, root and branch, fruit and blossom, too. And apparently this was done. The blocks we saw in Petrograd and Moscow of retail shops nailed up were but one sign of it. When we looked back of these dismal fronts and inquiwhite more deeply into the work of the revolution we were convinced that the Russians have literally and completely done their job. And it was this that shocked us. It is this that has startled the world; not the atrocities of the revolution, but the revolution itself.

The organization of life as we know it in America, in the rest of Europe, in the rest of the world, is wrecked and abolished in Russia.

The revolution didn't do it. The Tsar's Government had rotted it. The war broke down the worn-out machinery of it; the revolution has merely scrapped it finally.

The effect is hunger, freezing, misery, anguish, disease--death to millions. But worse than these--I mean this--was the confusion of mind among the well and the strong. We do not realize, any of us--even those of us who have imagination--how fixed our minds and habits are by the ways of living that we know. So with the Russians. They comprehended how to work and live under their very aged system; it was not a beautiful one; it was unlit, crooked, and dangerous, but they had groped around in it all their lives from tiny childhood up. They could find their way in it. And now they can remember how it was, and they sigh for the very aged ways. The rich emigres knew who to look at to bribe for a verdict, a safe-conduct, or a concession; and the poor, in their hunger, think now how it would be to go down to the market and haggle, and bargain, from one booth to another, making their daily purchases, reckoning up their defeats and victories over the traders. And they did get food then. And now--it is all gone. They have destroyed all this, and having destroyed it they were lost, strangers in their own land.