Page:Through Bolshevik Russia - Snowden - 1920.djvu/191

 fountains of internal criticism will once more begin to play upon the Russian Government. Its rough edges will be smoothed, its corners rubbed off. It will be obliged by facts and circumstances to move still further along the path of honourable compromise with the outside world. There will be much more personal freedom, less hunger, more happiness; at least, so I hope and believe.

For the alternative is too terrible to contemplate. The alternative is either a renewal of civil strife on the part of those whom the continuation of an extreme policy would continue to deprive of their freedom; or the development in the Communist party and the Russian people of a kind of Imperialist Communism, which would regard it as a duty to direct the country's organisation towards the establishment of world-Communism.

But even if this latter idea should ultimately dominate it will not be made manifest at once. Russia's material needs are too great. From the very beginning I have maintained that nothing would menace the worst features of Bolshevism so greatly as a return to the people of a measure of prosperity; for it is upon masses of hungry and unhappy people and not upon the prosperous and well-fed that the eloquent tyrant with land and plenty to offer them is able to work his malignant will.