Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/244

 mass of the people an irresistible longing for rest and peace.

But between these two periods also there is another difference, and this time to the advantage of the Russian Revolution. It is that France in 1793 had against her, if not the peoples, at least the Governments of all Europe, whilst Russia in 1917 has to sustain her and help her to triumph the Democracies of the whole world.

Certainly we are not among those who refuse to recognize the faults, weaknesses, and the sufferings of the Russian Revolution. On the surface she seems in a state of anarchy. That which existed is gone forever, what is to come is not yet in being. The whole fabric of the new régime remains to be manufactured, aggravated by the circumstance that they are at war.

But great as may be the difficulties and the perils of the present hour, they ought not to make us lose sight of the essential result. For the first time throughout the centuries of their history a nation of a hundred and eighty million souls is delivered from the most bloodstained, corrupt,