8 
LAND & WATER 
October ii, 1917 
religion how can vou conceive its sudden acceptance by 
the (Germans '! In "what wav is such a spirit to be proved ? 
W'liat act upon the part of the German people will be the out- 
ward sign of such an enormous revolution .-' And even if by 
a miracle, the like of which has never been known m the 
history of the world, a race with a certain character de- 
veloped through hundreds of years were to adopt a character 
wliolly foreign to it in a few weeks, why on earth should that 
guarantee us either a permanent peace or a justly organised 
luiro{)e ? If anyone says that democracies dc:) not make wars 
or do not commit evils he is talking nonsense. Democracy 
is sought as an act of justice. The argument for it is that it 
gives freedom to the will and that such freedom is a civic 
light. It is not sought as a spiritual .salvation. No one 
would be so mad as to sav that it made the will holy. The 
whole point of evil is the freedom of the evil agent, and a society 
which has adopted the democratic theory, that is, which acts 
by the expressed will of the wliole communit\-, may perfectly 
well use that will ft)r opjiression or for rapine, as it maj- use it 
for the op{X)sites of these c\il things, Deniocracy if only one 
of many theories of go\ernm^nt : democracies have in the past, 
and will in the future, commit monstrous acts, and there is 
no one, however attached to the theory of democracy, who 
has been so foolish as to pretend that it destroyed man's 
propensity to evil. Those who quote Rousseau in tliis 
connection cannot. I think, ha\-e read that great writer or 
have read him in some very faulty translation. At the \'ery 
outset of the " Social Contract." which is the strongest expo- 
sition of democratic theory in existence, its author remarks that 
such a go^'e^nment is far too good for men. 
The plain truth in the matter is this. There is a State in 
Europ*\ the citizens of which have for long manifested a will. 
which will, in its effect is, by all ILvuopean standards of morality 
and tradition, extremely evil. It has been, unfortunately, s<j 
tolerated as to become "very strong, and to command a great 
body of Allies. It has challenged the civilization of Europe 
feeling certain of victorv. It has failed to achieve that victory. 
Its maifestation during the struggle has been one of increasing 
evil, one atrocity added to another as the war continued. 
The peril of such a will amongst us must be exorcised if we are 
to live, and the only conceivable way of exorcising it is 
to break that will bv defeating the armed force which is its only 
weapon. Short of that, this evil survives, and its evil, 
though it may seem to us to have reached already the ^•el■y 
limits of wrong doing, will increase to our destruction. If we 
do not break it, the future will be all war, domestic and 
foreign, and a war without conventions, without restraint, 
degenerated, I repeat, into a doctrine of indiscriminate 
murder. No man can honestly say that four years ago he 
would liave thought the massacre of civilians in open towns, 
the sinking of hospital ships, the deliberate destruction of the 
greatest monuments of the past, possible. Such things were 
not in our conception at all in the year 1913. Because we 
are familiar with them in the year 1917 is no reason for yielding 
to such an abominable new code. The very fact that we are 
to-day horribly familiar with them is a direct argument for 
rooting them out and making them impossible in the future. 
I would seriously ask those who still use the arguments I 
am condemning, to consider a parallel with which they are well 
acquainted, but which they ne\"er seem to consider. How 
do they act against evils which directly aflcct their own skins ? 
\\'hen an individual arms himself with a bludgeon, knocks 
down a passer by on a dark night, and goes through his 
pockets, how does your Pacifist and pro-German deal with that 
individual ? Does he content himself with a promise that 
the action shall not be repeated ? Does he argue that such 
things have always been and always will be, and are but a nec- 
essary inconvenience which reasonable men should tolerate ? 
He does nothing of the sort. The forces of society are put to 
work to seize the individual in question and he is severely 
punished. He is put to such great pain as will, it is hoped, 
drive out of him the desire to repeat his offence and act as a 
warning to others who might wish to imitate him. If we did 
not do this to the foot- pad, if we contented ourselves w ith the 
sort of reasoning applied to the German Empire to-day by 
those who would save it from the consequences of its acts, 
there would be such an outbreak of violence as would break up 
society. 
The" parallel is exact, though the case of the chance burglar 
or garrotter with whom >our theorist is in practice so 
severe, is infinitely less important than the case of a whole 
State organised among us for plunder and for killing. The 
threat to humanity which the private criminal represents is 
nothing compared with the threat represented by a whole 
society deliberately provoking such a war as this, and conduct- 
ing it by such methods as these.; methods, be it remembered, 
which the German people heartily applaud. .. H- Bei.loc 
(To be continued). 
The next issue of "Land & Water" will contain a 
most important article by Mr. Arthur Pollen, who is 
lecturing in America. 
He reviewj the past administration of the Admiralty 
and makes a valuable suggestion for securing the future 
possible co-operation of the American Navy. 
Kerenski and Korniloff 
By M. A. Czaplicka 
A LTHOUGH the near future may bring still more 
/^ drastic changes in the home government of Russia, 
/ ^ and although it is not too much to suppose that 
A. JlLthe most extreme group may rise to the crest of 
the wave that will perhaps sweep over large tracts of Eastern 
Europe — it is in the Kerenski-Korniloff episode that the most 
important national and historical problem of the Russian 
Empire' is embodied. The meaning of this conflict cannot be 
studied too closely, for it will teach the Western world that 
the revolution in Russia ought not to be viewed merely from 
the standpoint of the French Revolution. Possibly it will 
alsi3 help to make clear how much more can be expected from 
Russia during the war and what arc the questions that may 
arise for her when peace terms are discussed. 
Ignoring the necessity for deeper study, which would lead 
to a better understanding of the situation, people hastily 
divided public opinion in Russia into two categories — more 
or lesi revolutionary, and more or less reactionary — and 
watched anxiously to see which of the supposed parties w'ould 
be ready to stand the more steadily by the Allies' war pro- 
gramme. And, since it is human to make abstract ideas more 
concrete by associating them with personalities, it was at first 
understood that all the revolutionaries might be placed behind 
Iverenski. and behind Korniloff all those who represented 
reaction in sympathy with the old regime. These two names 
seem to embody, as it were, the formulae of the two 
opposing programmes. 
But then some doubts were expressed at the propriety of 
such a di\-ision, and \'arious questions arose in the Western 
mind, as, for instance : 
■ Have not the old reactionaries in Russia been faithful 
.0 the Allies ? " 
" Is it right to welcome a revolution, which, as its most 
direct result, brings chaos and military retreat r " 
" Was the Revolution brought about by the people who 
wanted a more vigorous prosecution of the war, or by 
those who, like the Bolshc\iki, desire the end of the war 
at any price ? 
Of cQMrse. in asking these questions Western Europe over- 
looks the characteristic mentality of its Eastern Slavonic 
allies. Although the reasoning faculty is so well developed 
among them that their tendency to probe into the soul for 
motives has become proverbial, yet in the Near East all this 
takes place ailer the act, while the act itself is the result 
of impul.se alone ; this very important truth it is which is 
so often left out of account. 
Neither before nor after the Revolution could a definite 
line be drawn between a reactionary party and a revolu- 
tionary partv in Russia, nor could Russia's attitude towards 
her Western" Allies be measured by her credv in home politics. 
But at all times both iionest and "dishonest groups have been 
found within her. and it is not far from the truth to say that if 
the old regime had included a greater number belonging to 
the former type, it could not have been so easily overthrovyn. 
It is not so "much the form of Government as its corruption 
tliat makes the people distrustful of their old masters— a fact 
tliat has often happened before. 
From such a point of \-ie»v the Kerenski-Korniloff question 
might perhaps be better named the " honest-supporters-of- 
tlie-old-regime and honest-supporters-of-the-new-regime ques- 
tion." But this also would be misleading, since many of the 
followers of Korniloff were quite .honest supporters of the 
new regime, who. however, with their anxious ct}' for order 
at any price, did not realise that it is futile to pour oil upon 
a troubled sea while the storm is at its height. 
A study of the. personalities of the two leaders in the con- 
flict has quite dispelled any illusion that they were acting from 
personal ambition, or were supporting a programme not in 
