Thus there are two lines of thought which become merged in this book, the one occasionally leading away from the other. At first I felt this to be rather disturbing, and even considered whether it would not be better to divide the work into two separate sections, the one representing the exposition of the Commune, the other a discussion of Terrorism. However, in regard to my starting point, the Soviet Republic is in such very close connection with these two events in history, that it seemed to me impossible to treat them separately. I hope therefore that, in spite of the difficulties inherent in the dual nature of this book, I shall have succeeded in preserving uniformity in the structure of the thoughts contained therein.
However academic the reader may think many of my illustrations and expositions, they are all of the highest practical importance, especially at such a wildly fermented time as the present. This does not mean to say that I have adapted, as it were, the truth to the needs of the moment. Instead I have always sought, even in those sections where I was referring to a period long past, to treat only of that side of the subject which seemed calculated to throw light upon the chaos that surrounds us.
If we regard only this chaos as it exists in Russia and Germany at the present moment, our prospects at the moment and our future must be very far from cheering. We see a world sinking under economic ruin and fratricidal murder. In both countries we find Socialists under the Governments acting against other Socialists, with similar cruelty to that practised more than half a century ago by the Versailles butchers of the Commune—cruelty which has earned the most laudable indignation of the whole International Proletariat ever since.
