conditions of their becoming so ultimately are adherence to their
ideals through a very long period of stress, and a lessening of
fanaticism in their Communist teaching, conditions which, unhappily,
seem to be mutually incompatible.

The whole of the argument set out in this chapter may be summed up in
the statement of one fact which the mere idealist is prone to
overlook, namely that Russia is a country at a stage in economic
development not much more advanced than America in the pioneer days.
The old civilization was aristocratic and exotic; it could not survive
in the modern world. It is true that it produced great men, but its
foundations were rotten. The new civilization may, for the moment, be
less productive of individual works of genius, but it has a new
solidity and gives promise of a new unity. It may be that I have taken
too hopeful a view and that the future evolution of Russia will have
as little connection with the life and tradition of its present
population as modern America with the life of the Red Indian tribes.
The fact that there exists in Russia a population at a far higher
stage of culture, which will be industrially educated, not
exterminated, militates against this hypothesis, but the need for
education may make progress slower than it was in the United States.

One would not have looked for the millennium of Communism, nor even
for valuable art and educational experiment in the America of early
railroading and farming days. Nor must one look for such things from
Russia yet. It may be that during the next hundred years there,
economic evolution will obscure Communist ideals, until finally, in a
country that has reached the stage of present-day America, the battle
will be fought out again to a victorious and stable issue. Unless,
indeed, the Marxian scripture prove to be not infallible, and faith