Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/112

 Russian is for the moment limited; his experience does not go as far as the free practice of modern life, and the complicated circumstances of that are as yet not within his grasp. Though the peasant is fully aware of the solidarity that binds him to his village, he understands less the connection between his individual activity and the national life. He will share in a brotherly spirit his corn with a poor neighbour, and he will not even be aware that in refusing to sell his harvest he may reduce the neighbouring town to famine. The worker will give his life for his comrade, but it will never occur to him that he owes his work to the community, and that by refusing it or in reducing it in such a crisis as this he is exposing the whole country to a mortal danger. The vast republic is like a great body whose organs are vigorous and healthy but without sufficient co-ordination to assure the life of the whole.

Co-ordination may come. If we are not mistaken, it is already developing rapidly. Nations mature quickly in the trials of great revolutions. If it is only experience