THE word revolution is loosely used, in ordinary language, to cover many forms of political and social transformation. In the definite historic sense, revolution means a complete change of the economic, social, and class relations in any country, which, whether brought about peaceably or forcibly, ends in the general legalization of the new system. Mere political revolts are not social revolutions. They may represent a serious attempt at social and economic change from below, or they may be only the displacement of a governing family, or clique, above. To-day, we speak of the revolts in China and Russia as revolutions. Nevertheless, the social and economic modifications in those great countries, below the surface, have, so far, been very small. In neither case has there yet been a reconstruction of society; and, in fact, the true revolution in both countries has only just begun.

The removal of the foreign dynasty of the Manchus, imposed by the last of the Tartar invasions, and the establishment of a purely Chinese Federative Republic, have not led, so far, to any crucial alteration in the general administration, in the methVOL. XI-NO. 525

ods of production, or in the relations of classes. An obnoxious foreign rule, with its superficial incidents, such as the pigtail, has been got rid of; and the Chinese, as formerly under the native Ming dynasty, are again their own masters. But Chinese institutions of all kinds remain much as they have existed for many centuries, with a vast agricultural peasant proprietary as the basis of society, and family rule and ancestor worship binding the fabric closely together. The ancient arrangements have only been modified by the partial introduction of railways, tramways, steamers, the great factory industry, telegraphs, telephones, and other improvements from the West. Some day these will undoubtedly cause a real social revolution throughout the Flowery Land, in spite of the natural conservatism of the masses of the people. The abolition of the pigtail and the recovery by women's feet of their natural shape are merely returns to sensible old customs; but, when the graves of the dead are freely allowed to be desecrated by the passage of steel rails and locomotive haulage, it is clear that the established conceptions of a superstitious and

ancestor-worshiping nation have been

shaken.*

The tendency towards modern organization and modern management, under Chinese control, is growing faster every day. But this had already begun under the last Manchu Emperors, one of whom was the first to formulate and decree a definite programme of reconstruction, upon the very same lines as the Republic is now following. The reactionary policy of the Dowager Empress and the Boxer risings checked progress for the time; but the attempts at political reaction against the Republic not long ago made at Peking have proved, by their complete failure, that few desire to go back to the old Imperial system, whether under a Manchu or a Chinese Emperor.

The era of a dominant autocracy residing in the Northern capital has come to an end. The Chinese of the great Provinces have decided that their local self-government shall be preserved, federated for national business, in a republican shape, and that further development shall take place under the management of the Chinese themselves. It may be hoped, therefore, that the displacement of the Tartars, which has occurred so often before in Chinese history, will now be final. But the real revolution, as already said, is only beginning to-day; and it will have vast consequences. An educated and intelligent population, consisting of a huge industrious agricultural body and a commercial class of exceptional ability, brought into direct contact with subversive industrial methods on a large scale, must soon exercise a tremendous

*It was Turgot who said that if everyone who lived since man began his existence on this planet had been provided with a cenotaph, it would long since have been necessary to destroy the tombs of the dead in order to furnish food for the living. Paul Louis Courier, writing for once in a grandiose style, declared, Les monuments se conservent où les hommes ont péri, à Baalbec, à Palmyre et sous les cendres de Vésuve.'

influence on the markets of the planet. In Russia the overthrow of the Romanoffs was also in itself a superficial occurrence. It happened, as it were, by accident, and before either the forces of revolt in the towns, or of the peasantry in the country, were prepared to face the very difficult problems of reconstruction which immediately demanded solution. Had not the reactionists of Tsardom attempted a counter-revolt of their own in order to anticipate a popular rising, the upheaval would hardly have taken place at that particular time. The frequent disturbances in the Germanized capital of Petrograd which followed upon the first successful rising, the war with the German invaders on the front, the mutinies of the troops themselves, due to Bolshevist propaganda and bribery from without-all this necessarily complicated the situation and diverted the attention of Western Europe from the gigantic economic issues below.

We are, in fact, looking on at a dayto-day development of the French Revolution as displayed in a newspaper cinematograph on an enormously greater scale.* A vast rural population of some 165,000,000 persons, in the eighteenth-century or seventeenth-century stage of development and culture, heavily taxed and appallingly poor, is striving for emancipation and endeavoring to take final possession of the soil. This population consists of various races and nations, speaking different languages, and all with different

*The difference between the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution is that, whereas the French had a class already developed which was versed in local administration and capable of taking up the reins of Government, the Russians scarcely possess such a class, outside the corrupt and hated bureaucracy of the tchinovniks. That. as Russia is now sadly discovering to her cost. is a very serious matter indeed. Even the anarchical outbreaks of the Jacquerie, sometimes leading to terrible outrages of which we are allowed to hear little in England, are not so dangerous as this entire lack of capable and trustworthy native administrators.

histories behind them. At the same time, the proletariat of the great cities, which is not more than nine per cent of the total inhabitants of Russia, created partly by the steady expropriation of the peasantry, partly by the policy of state industries, and partly by the introduction of foreign capital and foreign employment on a large scale-this proletariat of the cities, divorced from the soil and possessed of no property but the power to labor in their bodies, is endeavoring to apply the latest theories of the scientific Socialism of the West to a state of society which is not yet nearly ripe for the successful application of such theories. Nothing of the kind has been seen before in history. The entire situation is wholly exceptional.

The social and economic development of modern Russia begins with the emancipation of the serfs in the period 1861-1866. This emancipation, as all the world knows, was, economically speaking, much more nominal than real. Instead of recognizing the complementary portion of the old statement of the peasants: 'We are the Lord's; the land is ours,' Alexander II relieved the serfs from their personal servitude to the nobles, but only gave them the land under conditions that left them, in most respects, worse off than before. Had the Tsar Alexander risked a revolt of the boyars, and given the land outright to the peasantry (as Joseph II of Austria had attempted to do in Bukovina), then a great and beneficial revolution would have been peacefully effected, and his dynasty might have been permanently secured on the throne.

Probably the mischiefs arising out of further unconscious economic changes could not have been averted; but the emancipated serfs would

have obtained a generation or two of comparative well-being. As it was, these unpropertied freedmen acquired their land at a very heavy cost, by payments spread over fifty years; state taxation became heavier and heavier; while, all the time, the substitution of production for sale in place of production for use by themselves, the lord, and his retainers, made the emancipated serfs mere slaves of their unfortunate surroundings. Simultaneously, the increasing debt of the Russian Government to the capitalism of Western Europe, for strategical railways, state industries and the like, established a drain of agricultural produce, to pay interest on these advances, without commercial return, which intensified the difficulties of the rural districts. this combined pressure on the peasantry gradually created a non-agricultural class, which was attracted to the cities by the state industries set on foot by the Government and fostered by loans and investments from without. Thus the city proletariat of Russia, still a small minority of the population, is mainly a factitious growth, fostered from without by state organization within.

All

As a consequence, the economic and intellectual antagonism between country and town, which results everywhere from the system of production for profit, has been intensified in Russia. Peasants are producing cereals and other agricultural commodities by primitive methods of cultivation. They do this more and more for sale for cash on the market, in order to pay taxes which are rigidly exacted in cash, to meet the usurious charges on the debts they have been forced to contract, and to purchase improved tools and manures where they can. But in every case they want to get high prices for what they

have to sell, as their sole means of relief from crushing burdens. Similarly, high prices for the goods which are the output of their interminable toil on small home industries during the long winter months can alone give hope of squeezing a little better wage from their employers or the middlemen.

On the other hand, the new wageearning townsfolk want to get those necessaries of life which the peasants offer as cheaply as possible, so that their own scanty wages may go farther. And the land cultivators cannot escape from the effects of an economic pressure, the development of which they can neither understand nor cope with, and the expansion of which they are unable to resist. This was a serious situation even in peaceful and quiet periods. Amid revolution and war, it becomes nothing short of appalling. Though the drain to the West for interest on foreign loans and invested capital, amounting to not less than 55,000,000l. a year out of a total value of exports, estimated in 1912 at 160,000,000l., was temporarily suspended in 1914, owing to the impossibility of exportation, the pressure of taxation on the mass of the peasantry was not reduced to that extent. And, from the moment when the revolution began, the necessity for funds forced the Government to issue paper money in excess of any possible power to meet it in cash. In consequence, the value of the rouble, remaining, for the sale of agricultural produce, at the old amount of two shillings before the war (as against the nominal amount of three shillings), fell for the purchasing of articles required by the peasants for tillage, etc., to the level of sixpence or less, and the price of such articles rose accordingly to an unprecedented height. Even the seizure of the unredeemed

land, or the repudiation of redemption payments, could not obviate the economic crisis. The peasants, naturally enough, would not sell their grain, upon which at least they could exist, for a price reckoned in paper money at its old value, when they could get none of their necessaries except at inordinate rates for the deteriorating paper thus paid to them. Therefore, the real Russian Land Revolution is beginning under conditions which may bring about first anarchy and then reaction. Yet production for profit instead of use, the antagonism of town and country, crushing taxation, and deteriorating paper money-all these only hasten the greater economic change. Reaction itself, even with a full force of a reorganized army behind it, could not withstand the march of economic development. The peasantry demand the land, and they will get it. They are refusing to fight the foreign invaders at the front, in order that they may not forego their share of the redistribution at the rear. The entire peasantry of Russia, with all the differences that separate them, have in the main the same desires. In the Ukraine, with its old-settled population and eagerness for national recognition and local self-government; in Siberia, where immigrants are increasing more rapidly than in Canada; in the rich but deteriorating blackearth region, and in the poor soil of the forest districts, the people demand the ownership of the land, light taxation, relief from usury, and the removal of irresponsible bureaucrats. However ignorant they may be, they all understand that programme, and yearn for its accomplishment.

The civilized world has, in fact, entered upon a period of unrest which greatly transcends in extent, as well as in importance, the European dis