army and navy, although it is admittedly impossible to get the
majority to vote at elections for the programme of the Bolsheviks.
This view is based upon Russian experience, where the army and navy
had suffered defeat and had been brutally ill used by incompetent
Tsarist authorities. The argument has no application to more efficient
and successful States. Among the Germans, even in defeat, it was the
civilian population that began the revolution.

There is a further assumption in the Bolshevik argument which seems to
me quite unwarrantable. It is assumed that the capitalist governments
will have learned nothing from the experience of Russia. Before the
Russian Revolution, governments had not studied Bolshevik theory. And
defeat in war created a revolutionary mood throughout Central and
Eastern Europe. But now the holders of power are on their guard. There
seems no reason whatever to suppose that they will supinely permit a
preponderance of armed force to pass into the hands of those who wish
to overthrow them, while, according to the Bolshevik theory, they are
still sufficiently popular to be supported by a majority at the polls.
Is it not as clear as noonday that in a democratic country it is more
difficult for the proletariat to destroy the Government by arms than
to defeat it in a general election? Seeing the immense advantages of a
Government in dealing with rebels, it seems clear that rebellion could
have little hope of success unless a very large majority supported it.
Of course, if the army and navy were specially revolutionary, they
might effect an unpopular revolution; but this situation, though
something like it occurred in Russia, is hardly to be expected in the
Western nations. This whole Bolshevik theory of revolution by a
minority is one which might just conceivably have succeeded as a
secret plot, but becomes impossible as soon as it is openly avowed and
advocated.