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 reason it was necessary to accept the Soviet rule as the permanent régime. The Soviet rule, apart from its cruelty and lust for robbery, had the most terrible effects on account of its complete absence of knowledge and its inexperience. People who yesterday made boots or cleaned the streets, to-day made laws and devoted themselves to jurisprudence and the problems of administration. Those who had devoted their lives hitherto to politics and had done mental work were now obliged to do physical labour. Only very few had had any experience of that which they now had to do. The validity of law had ceased to exist, the law courts no longer functioned, and in the place of legal usage we find the whim of the moment and personal prejudice. There was no time to reconstruct, but only violence for purposes of destruction. National economy suffered under the disease of plunder and robbery. This procedure was dignified with the mantle of communistic principles, but generally it was merely the product of the desire to possess the property of others. Professional thieves, released out of prison, and more than doubtful personalities, continued their métier as leading personalities under the protection of arms. Even people who hitherto would never have misappropriated the property of others, now disregarded all moral restraint in this connection, because they saw that anything which they did not seize was "communized" by others.

The complete destruction of all the essentials of economic productivity wrought more damage even than