theatres and roused the masses to the wonders of science and art.
Five. It has broken the spell of the past over a great people. Their potential forces have become kinetic. Their fatalistic: "It was so, and it will be so," is changed to "It was so, but it will not be so."
Six. It has assured self-determination to a score of subject races formerly held in vassalage to the Russian Empire. It has given them free hand to develop their own language, literature and institutions. Persia, China, Afghanistan and other backward countries—that is "countries with great natural resources and small navies"—it has treated as equals.
Seven. It has not paid lip-service to "open diplomacy," but has made it a reality. "It has swept the secret treaties into the ash-barrel of history."
Eight. It has pioneered the way to a new society and made invaluable laboratory experiments in Socialism on a colossal scale. It has quickened the faith and increased the morale of the working-classes of the world in their battle for the new social order.
The wise men rise up to point out that these results might have been obtained in a better way. Likewise the Reformation, the Independence of America, the Abolition of Slavery might have been achieved in a more gracious, less violent manner. But history did not move that way. And only the foolish quarrel with history.
