[THIS article appeared in a Russian Socialist paper on November 29, 1910, immediately after Tolstoi's death. At that time its author was known only to a comparatively limited circle of fellow Radicals.]

LEV TOLSTOI is dead. His world-wide significance as an artist and his worldwide fame as a thinker and preacher each reflects in its way the universal significance of the Russian Revolution.

Lev Tolstoi had proved himself a great artist even before the serfs were emancipated. In the long series of masterpieces that embodies the fruit of his literary labors for more than half a century he describes chiefly pre-Revolutionary Russia, still in semiservitude even after the land reform of 1861 - the Russia of the village, the great landlord, and the peasant. Tolstoi raised so many profound questions when portraying this stage of his country's evolution, he was such a supreme artist, that his works ranked among the first in the contemporary literature of the world. Thanks, therefore, to the illumination of his genius, the gestation period of the Revolution in one of the most backward and feudal nations of the world was a period of broadening comprehension of her problems for all mankind.

Tolstoi merely as an artist, however, is known intimately to only a small minority, even in Russia. His great works could become the possession of

1 From Die Rote Fahne (Berlin official Communist daily), November 29

the masses only through a struggle -a struggle against the social order that doomed millions and millions to hopeless ignorance, servitude, and misery.

Tolstoi has not only left behind him literary masterpieces that will be treasured and read by the common people long after they have won for themselves conditions of life worthy of the dignity of men, long after they have shaken off the yoke of landlords and capitalists; he had the gift of expressing with extraordinary power the sentiment of those masses, crushed as they are by the present social system, to picture their condition, to voice their spontaneous protest and rebellious rage. Tolstoi, who belongs mainly to the epoch between 1861 and 1904, has left in his writings a marvelous record both as an artist and as a thinker and preacher of the distinctive historical features, and of the strength and weakness, of the first Russian Revolution.

An outstanding characteristic of that Revolution was that it was brought about by a small yeomanry, by peasants with middle-class ideals, at a time when capitalism was already highly developed in the whole world-indeed, on no inconsiderable scale even in Russia. It was a middle-class revolution because its immediate object was to destroy Tsarist absolutism and the big-estate system, without disturbing the rule of the middle classes. The peasantry in particular saw no further ahead than this, and utterly failed to distinguish between the immediate and

the ultimate objectives of their campaign. It was a middle-class peasant revolution because specific abuses had pushed to the front the questions of reforming land-tenures, of abolishing mediæval land-rights and privileges, and of thus clearing the way for capitalism.

Tolstoi's works betray both the strength and the weakness, both the fury and the futility, of this peasant agitation. In his fiery, passionate, unsparing criticism of the State, and of the official policing Church, he was simply giving articulate form to the feelings of the primitive peasant democracy of a democracy that, during centuries of serfdom, official oppression, exploitation, church-fostered benightedness, deception, and betrayal, had piled up mountains of hatred and rage against its oppressors. His uncompromising denunciation of private property, and of private landownership in particular, but expresses the sentiment of the peasantry at the historical moment when the medieval monopoly of the great landlords and the State had at length become an intolerable barrier to the progress of the nation and must be swept aside regardless of all else. The sturdy denunciations of capitalism that welled like glowing lava from his outraged heart but voiced the dread and resentment of the same patriarchal peasant when he saw a new, invisible, incomprehensible enemy advancing against him from some vague lair in the city or abroad, destroying in its course all the old customs of his peasant existence and bringing him a new type of misery, poverty, famine, demoralization, and disease; they expressed the revolt of the peasant who found himself the victim of new extortions heaped upon the old, the extortions of modern capitalism added to those of the feudal

master.

Nevertheless, this fiery protestant,

this passionate accuser, this mighty critic, likewise betrays in his works his misunderstanding of the true causes of the evils he denounces and of the true way to escape from them, as only a naïve, patriarchal peasant could. For him the fight against the absolutist police State, against the monarchy, was to be won by a negation of politics, by 'not resisting evil.' Consequently, he stood aside and took no part in the great revolutionary uprising of 1905. He tried to combat the official Church by preaching a new and purified religion—that is, a new and subtler poison for the oppressed masses. His repudiation of private ownership in land did not make him concentrate his offensive against the real enemy, against the large estates and the monarchy that protected them; instead his ardor wasted itself in dreamy, vague, impotent lamentations. His condemnation of capitalism and the misery it wrought among the masses was combined with complete apathy toward the international campaign for emancipation that the Socialist proletariat of the world was fighting.

These contradictory tendencies in Tolstoi are the product, not only of inconsistencies in his own personal way of thinking, but also of the highly complicated and irreconcilable social influences and historical traditions that shaped the sentiments of different classes of Russian society during the period following the land reform and preceding the Revolution.

Consequently we can judge Tolstoi rightly only from the standpoint of the class that by its political determination and resolute measures during the first phase of the struggle to abolish these contradictions contradictions - that is, during the Revolution of 1905 - led the fight to emancipate the common people and rescue them from exploitation.

Tolstoi is dead. Pre-Revolutionary

Russia, whose weakness and impotence are reflected in the philosophy and the literary masterpieces of this great artist, belongs to the past. None the less, he has bequeathed us something that belongs, not to the past, but to the future. The Russian proletariat will enjoy that inheritance. Tolstoi's criticism of the State, the Church, and private ownership of land, will teach the rank and file of the producing and exploited classes, not, as he designed, to be contented with self-perfection and with merely longing for a saintly life, but to work out their own salvation with their strong right arms, to shatter

with a new and more terrible blow the throne of the Tsars and the privileges of the landlords, which are already shaken and fractured by the Revolution of 1905 but are not yet destroyed. Tolstoi's criticism of capitalism will teach the masses not to be contented with mere evangelical fulminations against capital and capitalist oppression, but to discipline and train themselves for the great coming battle to overthrow capitalism and to set up in its place a new social order in which the misery of the masses shall be abolished and the exploitation of man by man shall forever cease.

TETUÁN, the capital of Spanish Morocco, lies embosomed in the wild Rif mountains like an oasis in the desert. Beautiful gardens and fig and olive orchards surround the town with a green girdle. The Rio Martin and its many small tributaries flow through the valley, which is less than two miles wide, and convert it into a fertile little paradise that contrasts strikingly with the barren gorge-cleft precipices and peaks which rise abruptly to a height of three and four thousand feet above the narrow plain. The Spaniards had several fortifications and blockhouses in these mountains to protect the city from enemy raids.

September a year ago the Riffi began to attack these outposts. At the first

1 From Neues Wiener Tagblatt (Vienna Conservative daily), November 14

rush many blockhouses were taken, their garrisons slaughtered, and their arms and ammunition captured. The only point that still held out was Fort St. Gourges, with a garrison of about one hundred men. But even that was hard pressed by the encircling enemy, and the sound of the battle raging there was clearly audible in the streets of Tetuán itself.

All the troops around the city were massed in the town to convoy a relief column to this fort. The civilian population was panic-stricken and clamored loudly that Abd-el-Krim's men would soon rush the place. Twelve batteries of artillery, ranging up to fifteen centimetres calibre, were massed on the edge of the city to bombard the mountains. Airplanes bombed the Moors all day long.

On September 10 a convoy consisting of the Third Bandera of the Legion and several regiments of Spanish regulars set forth, escorting one hundred and twenty pack mules with relief supplies. Altogether there were several thousand rifles in the expedition. It advanced without opposition through the gardens in the bottom of the valley, whose cottages and villas were deserted, their residents having taken refuge in the city itself—at a most unfortunate time for them, for the ripened crops were left unharvested.

After leaving the bottom lands, the column wound up a canyon into the mountains. Still there was no resistance. Finally it reached to the top of a rugged, plateaulike elevation. The native auxiliaries and the Legion were on either flank, while the main body of troops and the pack train formed the centre. Not a sound was audible, even from the vicinity of the fort ahead. The soldiers struggled laboriously upward in the scorching sun, still a considerable distance from their objective, which was in a tract of deeply gullied country at an elevation of about three thousand feet.

Suddenly volleys poured from every side upon the advancing forces. The natives, being perfectly familiar with every trail and cleft and chasm of the district, had managed to surround them completely, intent mainly upon capturing the supply train. In the tumult and panic that ensued no attempt was made to resist. Every man took to his heels. The deadly fire of the enemy picked off the mules so quickly that their bodies formed a barrier to retreat down the narrow canyon. The drivers deserted their animals and vanished at the first shot. Even the regulars were caught in the general panic. Rushing headlong toward the city in their terror, the troops broke through the circle of enemies, though with heavy losses.

The garrison of St. Gourges in the mountains above watched the debacle helplessly. Not a single pack animal was saved, and only a fraction of the convoy. One little squad was all that was left of the Third Bandera of the Legion. Its dead totaled several hundred.

Panic seized the city, for the Riffi pursued the fleeing Spaniards to the very entrance of the town. In spite of the artillery and the bombing planes, Tetuán's fate seemed sealed. Many civilians were killed by the enemy's bullets in its very streets, and, although the barracks and parade grounds were hastily entrenched, soldiers were shot down behind the makeshift ramparts. In fact, the advance guard of the enemy lay only two hundred yards from the first houses of the city.

Messages were hastily sent in all directions summoning aid. My bandera, just back from relieving Wadi Lau, received orders to march at once. When we reached Tetuán we found nearly thirty thousand troops, with aviators, artillery, and all the equipment of modern warfare, huddled around the city, practically besieged by natives armed only with rifles who were said to number no more than fifteen hundred men.

Those of our comrades in the Third Bandera who had been lucky enough to escape from the death trap a few days before painted a gruesome picture of the fighting. They described the Riffi as tall, gaunt, muscular fellows, with tawny, almost black faces, who seemed to spring out of the ground everywhere, flashing bright Arab daggers and slitting the throats of the soldiers before they could raise their arms in defense. These fighters were said to come from the French zone and the Southern deserts, and to be the backbone of Abd-el-Krim's forces.

We waited in no cheerful mood for

our anticipated orders to advance. The next day the whole of the neighboring mountain-side was bombarded with artillery and aviation bombs. Our officers made no secret of the desperate character of the enterprise. LieutenantColonel Franco, commanding the Legion, said to us: 'We shall either relieve that post to-morrow or not a Legionary will be left alive.' I heard many of my comrades mutter curses against the Spaniards, through whose deceptions they had been enticed into enlisting. That evening, however, a rumor spread through the camp that lifted the gloom a little: we were told that a native spy had been induced by the promise of a high reward to lead a detachment by an unknown native trail to the rear of the enemy.

At midnight two companies of Legionaries with this native guide set forth, in order to reach their position under cover of darkness. They stole out of camp as stealthily as spectres. About three o'clock, while the country was still wrapped in darkness, the rest of us moved forward in three divisions. Every precaution was taken not to alarm the enemy. The Fifth Bandera of the Legion led the flanking column on the left.

By dawn we were lying behind a declivity waiting the command for the next push forward. A fierce drumfire was laid down from Tetuán, and five aviators began to bomb the mountain ahead of us. Here and there we heard the crack of an Arab rifle. Mountain guns were advanced into the foothills. Peddlers whose avarice was stronger than their fear crept between our ranks selling gin. I gave my last coin for a draught of it, in order to key myself up for the horrors ahead. Our company commander bought several bottles and distributed them among his troops with the same intent. Meanwhile the firing grew stronger on the left, and a mes

senger brought us orders to advance.

We charged up a canyon at doublequick, passing a ruined village on the way. Men dropped every yard or two, for the enemy opened a lively fire against us. At the foot of the mountain we halted to let the artillery comb the ground ahead. Although they were attacked from three directions, the Riffi yielded no ground. Half an hour later we made a second charge that brought us still a little farther forward. But I saw many of my comrades stop, whirl around, and roll lifeless down the steep ascent. We did not catch sight of a single enemy. Our officers urged us on. We climbed higher and higher into the desert loneliness of the wild, rugged cliff country.

A moment later a wild volley sounded from the peaks above us. Our comrades, guided by the native spy, were attacking the enemy from behind. The Riffi withdrew at once, for they did not know how strong the forces back of them were.

of them were. But they kept up a

lively fire as they retired. Our bugles immediately sounded the charge, and urged on by our officers we ran forward, bent low to make as small a mark as possible, but losing men at every step.

As we pushed ahead we were met by the almost unendurable stench of the decaying bodies of those who had fallen in the previous fight. Most of the corpses had been stripped of their clothing, and many had their throats cut. I shall never forget the distortion of horror on their faces. The few corpses of the natives that we found were literally hacked to pieces by the Spaniards, and the heads were carried forward on bayonet-points as trophies of victory.

In the course of the day we relieved St. Gourges. Its garrison, half starved and half maddened by thirst, was escorted back to Tetuán. My bandera remained in the mountains for three