ness of the other. Even if it were assumed that the forces let loose by the French Revolution were beyond human control, the same could not be asserted of the Russian Revolution. The revolutionary forces are, no doubt, strong, but the Conservative forces are also formidable. It is not true that the less resistance is offered to the energies of destruction, the less bloody the revolution will be. It is not true that it is too late to prevent a catastrophe. No doubt it is so much easier to surrender one's will to the so-called "logic of events," to let the storm rage and pass, to "emigrate" like the French aristocracy, and to fly before danger, and if the catastrophe does break out, to make one man or one class the scapegoat of the national sins. But what we call fatality in such cases is nothing but the fatality of our own folly and of our own cowardice.
What made the Reign of Terror inevitable in France was not any mysterious "logic of events," but the criminal interference of European Governments, who assumed that the prostrate and bankrupt condition of France, distracted by a religious war and a civil war, gave them a splendid opportunity of invading the country and dictating their own terms. Russia
