CHAPTER XX
RETROSPECT
It was not the revolutionists who made the Russian Revolution. This in spite of hosts of revolutionists who tried their best to make it. For a century gifted men and women of Russia had been agitated over the cruel oppression of the people. So they became agitators. Into the villages, the shops and the slums they went crying:
"Shake to earth your chains like dew,
Which in sleep have fallen on you.
Ye are many, they are few."
But the people did not rise. They did not even seem to hear. Then came that supreme agitator—Hunger. Hunger, rising out of economic collapse and war, goaded the sluggish masses into action. Moving out against the old worm-eaten structure they brought it down. Elemental impersonal forces did what human agencies found impossible.
The revolutionists, however, had their part. They did not make the Revolution. But they made the Revolution a success. By their efforts they had prepared a body of men and women with minds trained to see facts, with a program to fit the facts and with fighting energy to drive it thru. There
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