Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Current Economic Affairs (1924).pdf/220

206 adversities, Russia may become the most prosperous country of continental Europe.

There are many confusing conditions entering into considerations. In the beginning the Bolsheviks stupidly set out to annihilate management, the intelligence of the country, which they associated with capitalism. After slaughtering hundreds of thousands they awoke to the realization that if they kept on with such extinction there would be nobody left to direct industries. It had by that time become appreciated by them that the proletariat and peasantry did not know how and could not learn. It will remain for time to show whether with the recovery from that madness they saved enough of the brains of Russia.

In a country like the United States such a loss would be fatal. It would spell the downfall of our civilization. In a backward, essentially agricultural country like Russia it may not be so serious. In our optimistic forecasts we give expression to that thought. There may be even an important offsetting thing in the knowledge gained by millions of peasants while they were prisoners of war in Germany, who were put mainly to work on the farms and thus had the opportunity to see that steel plows are better than a crooked stick and that iron shod wheels are an improvement upon those of wood alone. Such knowledge has now permeated all through Russia. Life in the army, too, created new desires, such as that for sugar with which the soldiers were supplied, and which they found to taste good. In rejuvenated Russia the people may want to work hard in order to get new things.