that I do not believe industrial work in the early days of industry
can be made tolerable to the worker. Once again I experienced the
dread of seeing the ideals of the Russian revolutionaries go down
before the logic of necessity. They are beginning to pride themselves
on being hard, practical men, and it seems quite reasonable to fear
that they should come to regard this full and humane development of
the child as a mere luxury and ultimately neglect it. Worse still, the
few of these schools which already exist may perhaps become exclusive
to the Communists and their children, or that company of Samurai which
is to leaven and govern the mass of the people. If so, they will soon
come to resemble our public schools, in that they will prepare, in an
artificial play atmosphere, men who will pass straight to the position
of leaders, while the portion of the proletariat who serve under them
will be reading and writing, just so much technical training as is
necessary, and Communist doctrine.

This is a nightmare hypothesis, but the difficulties of the practical
problem seem to warrant its entertainment. The number of people in
Russia who can even read and write is extremely small, the need to
get them employed industrially as rapidly as possible is very great,
hence the system of education which develops out of this situation
cannot be very ambitious or enlightened. Further it will have to
continue over a sufficiently long period of time to allow of the risk
of its becoming stable and traditional. In adult education already the
pupil comes for a short period, learns Communism, reading and
writing--there is hardly time to give him much more--and returns to
leaven the army or his native village. In achieving this the
Bolsheviks are already doing a very important and valuable work, but
they cannot hope for a long while to become the model of public
instruction which they have hitherto been represented to be. And the