I want in this book to describe the working of the machine as I now see it.But it is not only the machine which is more nakedly visible than it was.The stress to which it is being subjected has also not so much changed its character as become easier of analysis.At least, I seem to myself to see it differently.In the earlier days it seemed quite simply the struggle between a revolutionary and non-revolutionary countries.I now think that that struggle is a foolish, unnecesary, lunatic incident which disguised from us the existence of a far more serious struggle, in which the revolutionary and non-revolutionary governments are fighting on the same side.They fight without cooperation, and throw insults and bullets at each other in the middle of the struggle, but they are fighting for the same thing.They are fighting the same enemy.Their quarrel with each other is for both parties merely a harassing accompaniment of the struggle to which all Europe is committed, for the salvage of what is left of European civilization.
The threat of a complete collapse of civilization is more imminent in Russia than elsewhere.But it is clear enough in Poland, it cannot be disregarded in Germany, there is no doubt of its existence in Italy, France is conscious of it; it is only in England and America that this threat isnot among the waking nightmares of everybody.Unless the struggle, which has hitherto been going against us, takes a turn for the better, we shall presently be quite unable to ignore it ourselves.
I have tried to state the position in Russia today: on the one hand to describe the crisis itself, the threat which is forcing these people to an extreme of effort, and on the other hand to describe the organization that is facing that threat; on the one hand to set down what are the main characteristics of the crisis, on the other hand to show how the comparatively small body of persons actually supplying the Russian people with its directives set about the stupendous task of moving that vast inert mass, not along the path of least resistance, but along a path which, while alike unpleasant and extremely difficult, does seem to them to promise some sort of eventual escape.
No book is entirely objective, so I do not in the least mind stating my own reason for writing this one (which has taken time that I should have liked to spend on other and very different things).Knowledge of this reason will permit the reader to make allowances for such bias I have been unable to avoid, and so, by judicious reading, to make my book perhaps nearly as objective as I should myself wish it to be.
It has been said that when two armies face each other across a battle front and engage in mutual slaughter, they may be considered as a single army engaged in suicide.Now it seems to me that when countries, each one severally doing its best to arrest its private economic ruin, do their utmost to accelerate the economic ruin of each other, we are witnessing something very like the suicide of civilization itself.There are people in both camps who believe that armed and economic conflict between revolutionary and non-revolutionary Europe, or if you like between Capitalism and Communism, is inevitable.These people, in both camps, are doing their best to make it inevitable.Sturdy pessimists, in Moscow no less than in London and Paris, they go so far as to say "the sooner the better," and by all means in their power try to precipitate a conflict.Now the main effort in Russia to-day, the struggle which absorbs the chief attention of all but the few Communist Churchills and Communist Millerands who, blind to all else, demand an immediatepitched battle over the prostrate body of civilization, is directed to finding a way for Russia herself out of the crisis, the severity of which can hardly be realized by people who have not visited the country again and again, and to bringing her as quickly as possible into a state in which she can export her raw materials and import the manufactured goods of which she stands in need.I believe that this struggle is ours as well as Russia's, though we to whom the threat is less imminent, are less desperately engaged.Victory or defeat in this struggle in Russia, or anywhere else on the world's surface, is victory or defeat for every one.The purpose of my book is to make that clear.For, bearing that in mind, I cannot but think that every honest man, of whatever parity, who cares more for humanity than for politics, must do his utmost to postpone the conflict which a few extremists on each side of the barricades so fanatically desire.If that conflict is indeed inevitable, its consequenceswill be less devastating to a Europe cured of her wounds than to a Europe scarcely, even by the most hopeful, to be described as convalescent.But the conflict may not be inevitable after all.No man not purblind but sees that Communist Europe is changing no less than Capitalist Europe.If we succeed in postponing the struggle long enough, we may well succeed in postponing it until the war-like on both sides look in vain for the reasons of their bellicosity.