THE WORLD REVOLUTION 19 



eyes never before seen in history, crowding at last 

 at the head of every avenue of authority and stretch- 

 ing out waiting and impatient hands towards all the 

 levers of power in the State. And in the day-dreams 

 of this multitude the sombre, insistent, infinitely 

 widening instinct of the social emotion has already 

 begun to close with the vast problems of the future. 



Writers and historians will attempt in days to 

 come to limn the bold outlines of the world drama 

 in which we behold Demos in the West with the 

 inheritance behind him of thousands of generations 

 of successful fighting awaking in history in this 

 situation. It is a position with every element of 

 human passion, every element of tragedy, every 

 element of revolution in it, and all represented on a 

 scale without precedent or comparison in the past. 



Throughout the West it may be observed that for 

 generations the idea of the world presented by text- 

 books of economic science has been based on a 

 central conception. However deftly the realisms 

 of the human struggle have been glossed over, 

 however faithfully the artists of its apologies may 

 have softened the grim silhouettes of that struggle 

 into a background of the public weal, of one thing 

 there can be no doubt. The fundamental idea of 

 the economic science of the West has always been 

 the conception of society as a state of war. 



