about Trotskii. But he too has always been a zero politically, and will remain so to the end of his days-even if destiny were to make him dictator.

In the first place, Trotskii, who did not join our Party until the eve of his triumph, when it became the only organization that promised a career, never had anything Communistic in him; that is why Lenin was right again in disliking and distrusting him.

You say he created the Red Army? Enough of that talk. First of all, if you want to know the truth, we have no army, unless by army you mean parades, demonstrations against world imperialism, and punitive expeditions at home. A prominent German general, whom we asked to take charge of our military instruction, came to Moscow, looked things over, waved his hand, and said something that was not flattering and is not fit to repeat on paper. And did not Trotskii himself say once that his Red Army was like a radish, red on the outside, but white inside? It is not without significance, in my opinion, that Sergei Sergeevich Kamenev, the actual military head of the army and an old-time officer, has never joined the Communist Party, and keeps twisting his magnificent moustache with a silence that seems to hide a great deal.

There is no greater coward than Trotskii. That is why he so loves loud, boastful- and always cold and artificial-talk and demagogic slogans. By the way, he sometimes gets lost in these, as when, for instance, he, to our great and general confusion, cited in one of his army and navy orders the words of Jesus to Judas Iscariotforgetting their source and meaning: "That thou doest, do quickly.'

Recall our famous debate on tradeunions, which threatened to cause a Party schism and to put Trotskii in the place of Lenin. Indeed that was the

real issue at stake, hidden under a heap of theoretical rubbish. Trotskii actually commanded a majority in that Party Congress, because the Party had not been sufficiently vigilant and the wrong local representatives had been 'elected'; but at the last moment he was frightened by the prospect of power and responsibility, and shamefully took to cover.

Or remember his latest exploit, his book, which was a breach of Party discipline. It cost his supporters dearly, for at the critical moment he deserted them. He might without difficulty have sat in the place of the dictator, for the 'lower Party strata,' as well as the army, were for him. But he could not conquer his cowardice, and took 'a leave of absence, for his health,' in the distant Caucasus at the order of 'the triumvirate,' there to spend his time shooting crows, in imitation of Nicholas II he always imitates someone. Later he came back to Moscow like an obedient lamb and resumed his belligerent talk again, threatening war on Europe and what not — in imitation, I believe, of Paul I.

He is as cold as an icicle, and only naïve people mistake his false pathos and his boldness for 'the sacred fire of revolution.' Do you remember how this talking machine stood on the stage of the Great Theatre and received the ovations of the huge audience: nose in the air and the face of a mummy — and not a nod of his head! Not a sign of response!

Compare this with Iliich, who used to say so simply, like a child: 'My dear friends, this and this is my opinion. I know I'm right. You don't agree? So much the worse for you, because I shall act as I think best, and not as you wish. Good-bye.'

his fellows in his trade-delegation, and so on. Because then, I'm afraid, I might have to pollute the paper with the name of Steklov, the editorial writer.

They are nonentities; but as to our so-called 'young guards,' our League of Communist Youth, our 'Lenin pioneers,' our 'converts' from other political Parties, and our imported foreign sweethearts, for we have a great plenty of them, they are not merely zeros, they are negative quantities, and such serious drawbacks to the cause that we puzzle helplessly what to do with them.

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who has always been a friend of the Revolution'; or: 'Dear Felix, please let so-and-so out of prison. I know he is perfectly trustworthy.' The whole country is being governed by means of these calling-cards, which are bought at fabulous prices such as only the rarest autographs command.

The Party stinks to Heaven!

Have I not heard voices raised in defense of 'self-support,' as they call it, as no sin? Do they not make a shrewd distinction between 'bribery' as something received in return for favors that are contrary to law, and this 'self-support' extorted from the new bourgeoisie

Here we come to a devilish puzzle. Why is it that persons who only a short while ago sacrificed their all to their convictions, and lived like your church ascetics, have suddenly conceived a taste for sumptuous homes homes-not apartments, not even twenty-room apartments, but residences of the most luxurious sort, champagne, gay female companions, private trains, 'thirty-five thousand servants' merely to run their errands? And their wives will have nothing less than diamonds the size of hazelnuts, a crown jewel, if possible' is the way they put it, and ten gowns a month from Paris, or at least with a sour mien from the great Lamanova. Why is it that so-and-so, after years of a half-starved revolutionary life with his homely but loyal Communist helpmate, when he would readily have given the Party everything he owned, even a million ruble legacy if he had received it, must now move into a palatial residence on the Povarskaia, divorce his Communist wife, 'sign up at the Commissariat' with a seventeen-year-old beauty overloaded with paint and perfumery, and trade briskly in his calling-cards: 'Dear Nicolas, please do this and that for X.,

Then why do these Communists steal? It seems an inexorable law! I know your explanation, which you summed up in a word to the tribunal that tried you. 'Where there is dirt, there will be vermin,' you said. But you must not, you dare not, base such a generalization on a few special cases! Revolution is not dirt, it is sacred fire! Only give me a great, honest Revolutionary-Communist! 'There is no such thing,' you tell me. You lie - you should be shot for it!

'Russia is perishing!' you tell me you, a Slavophil, you a believer in ‘light from the East' and in the divine mission of our thankless fatherland. Of course, you are romantic. And so are we only we write our creed, not with pen and ink, but with fire and sword, upon the scrolls of inexorable reality. Once, I remember, you drove me out of your room because, after a hot argu

which I, losing patience, retorted that unfortunately we could not execute Dostoevskii. Yes, I repeat even now, and with pleasure, that we certainly would have executed Dostoevskii, and that we should have dealt no more gently with Tolstoi, had he broken loose in our days, as he did under the Tsar, with that pamphlet of his 'I Cannot Remain Silent.' But now I shall assert something even worse than that. Russia? What is Russia?

To you the word symbolizes a high mystery. To you Russia is a text engraved on the throne of your God, who is a cosmic monarch with no use for constitutional government, ‘Six letters of fire and blood-six steps to the divine glory.' To me, however, it is but a geographical conception that we have succeeded in abolishing without the least harm to the Revolution a word that we have relegated to the musty archives of the past where it belongs. To me modern Russia that is, the S. S. S. R. - - is the accidental bivouac of the Central Committee of the Third International.

Do you remember your own letter to

Lenin, which you wrote in 1921, like a people's deputy, in the naïve belief that Lenin, as formerly our own beloved Tsar, was surrounded by bad advisers who would not let him see the truth? We all laughed heartily when we read your kind-hearted stupidities, with which you tried to explain to us what Russia really is and what her destiny will be. Yes, at that time you believed in Lenin. That Byzantine-Moscovite romanticism of yours was the same as that nursed by all Russians throughout their stupid history.

No, my dear youngster, Lenin and all of us- the leaders-understand the Russian reality as well as you do. And as to knowing it - why, our Felix has put two Chekists behind each citizen! We certainly know Holy Russia's people, at least, better than you do.

You may be proud. Iliich read your letter to the last syllable, and do you want to know what he said? 'He must be a good man. A great pity he is not with us.' Then he coughed, cleared his throat, and added: ‘And a clever man

very clever - but a fool!'

How can you fail to understand that Russia, — which to you is an end in itself, interests us only in so far as it gives us means and materials for the world revolution? What we need for that is a more or less secure roof over our heads, and then money all the money we can get.

[THEODOR BERKES is the veteran Balkan correspondent of the Berliner Tageblatt, who has lately been on a special journey through Macedonia.]

In order to shield their women from chance glances, the Turks, when they still ruled Macedonia, forbade the construction of windows on the street side of houses, and so the Albanian and Turkish mahalas (city quarters), unless they were part of the charchija, or business section, still have a dead and dreary outward aspect. The narrow streets are long rows of towering clay walls, and only here and there in this gray waste does the gable of one of the houses become visible.

The lady who was my traveling companion was also disillusioned by the colorless clay of the Orient, and her curious, penetrating woman's eyes wanted to pierce the wall behind which the Turkish custom concealed the interesting trousers-wearing members of her own sex secluded far from the glance of every man, and even from the glance of other women. But though these walls were only clay, they did not part, and the little wooden doors that opened quickly here and there, and just as quickly closed, by no means satisfied these curious eyes. What was there to do?

Our Albanian friend in upper Tonus detected the discontent of my com

1 From Berliner Tageblatt (Liberal daily), January 11

panion and, gallant squire of dames that he was, fell to thinking how he might satisfy her wish. Presently came the son-in-law of the mufti himself, wearing the keche, or white Albanian cap of felt, and laying his hand to his mouth, to his eyes, and to his forehead as a greeting, he said in Albanian, ‘Mir se vjen!' (welcome). We replied, like men of the world, Tu ngat jeta!' and then, with a 'Lutem Zotni!' we all went to the house of the mufti.

Not even the mufti's house, however, would admit us behind its clay walls immediately, and when at length we stood before them we had still to wait some time on the other side of the street. A little Turkish boy was first sent into the house to bear word of our coming, and also of course to bear word that men were in the party. When the youngster at length came back we went in through the street door, to find ourselves in a little courtyard, but still surrounded by clay walls, on which tobacco leaves were hung to dry, forming part of a little house into which, at right angles, led a flight of wooden steps. The mufti's son-in-law told us that this was the selamlik, the men's house, and then he went on into it through a little door. Here was a surprise for all of us. Now we had stepped into a magnificent big garden in which little streams of water bubbled and gurgled, while a lusty swarm of bees was humming about the hives. After the grayness of the clay walls this

garden seemed like a little marvel of color and sunshine. Shrubs were in bloom; flowers gave off their perfume; ancient trees threw their shadow, and through the branches of a large beech, which seemed, to exhale comfort, we saw a large white house.

"The haremlik!' whispered our leader, and as we walked toward the house we seemed to hear feminine drapery hurrying like a flock of frightened birds off the wide balcony and deep into the interior of the house.

Men in the harem? It gave me visions of cold steel between the ribs merely to think of it. But the mufti's son-in-law strolled unconcernedly ahead, first taking off his shoes, into the vestibule adorned with carpets, and big as a hall in itself; while we did the same. The luxury which we had already found in the garden increased as we made our way through numerous open doors that led out on the side, and we had the impression of more and more luxury as we went up a flight of stairs and into a special balcony-room. The balcony was raised in front of us and was connected with the garden by a lower gallery with carved wood and flowers as ornaments. The fragrance of the garden came up into the house. The sunbeams pierced through the branches of the beech, and golden spots of light danced over the gay carpet with all its silk embroidered cushions. Here, as a usual thing, the ladies of the harem sat, but we had frightened them away from their carpets and their cushions. We strolled into one of the adjoining rooms, and as we did so the mufti's son-in-law set himself squarely across the door through which our entrance was forbidden. We were in the mufti's own room now, and there was no mistaking that here the mufti received his wives. The woodwork of the room was artistically carved, and between the carpets with which the walls were hung

there were endless texts from the Koran, carefully painted and illuminated. Little intimate windows opened out on the garden, and on the long side of the wall there was a little raised fireplace, almost Gothic, with slender pillars. On the carved shelves that ran about the room were all the utensils that a Turkish household needs: there were about twelve sahans — those big, deep copper bowls with tin lining in which a rich host will often offer his guests some forty different dishes; spoons of wood and horn up above, which the orthodox Moslem still uses even to-day instead of knife and fork; innumerable little cups for the thick Turkish coffee; numerous drinkingglasses and silvered candlesticks. In the wainscoting were little doors behind which were huge closets to receive the bolsters and silken quilts that the Turks and Albanians spread out on the big carpet and use for beds. It makes hospitality simpler than with us, for in this way any Turkish house can receive any number of guests at any hour. To rest in the daytime, however, they use the mindelik little structures like sofas, placed along the walls in the room and strewn with carpets and silken cushions. In the corner hung the gold-mounted wall-clock with Turkish figures on the dial, and close beside it on the floor stood the mangal, the big copper basin in which the charcoal fire is lighted. Not a table or chair is to be seen in the room, and at meals they bring in a big table with Lilliputian legs, no more than a foot high, which at other times hangs outside on the kitchen wall.

The Turkish boy appeared and took the lady who was with me to call upon the ladies of the house. Meantime behind the closed door we men conversed, drank mocha out of little cups, cracked the nutlike kikiriki, took fruit from silver bowls, and sliced big sweet