We may be sure that Abelard himself did his best to destroy everything that might recall his fatal passion, but it is scarcely possible that all his verses passed from memory, and it is at least a probable surmise that in Dum Dianae vitrea, and possibly also in the shorter lyric Hebet sidus laeti visus, we have his handiwork. Translation here is especially difficult, for it is almost impossible to reproduce in another language the melody of the original, and the following version is but a faint shadow of the Latin.

For it brings

On its wings

Gift of dewy sleep by night.

Rest from troublings,

Magic balm that can appease
Care and make all anguish cease.

Antidote to grief,

Stealing over weary eyes
And to all our miseries

Bringing swift relief.

Sleep all other joys above,
Save the joy of love.

Wind amid the corn
On a summer's morn ;

Murmuring rivulet

Whose clear waters fret

O'er silver sand; the sound

Of mill wheels turning

Round and round;

Such spells as these the drowsy god

Uses upon you till you fall

Beneath his thrall.

From tender love to tender dreams!

And yet more sweet 'twill prove

It is tempting to make further quotations from Carmina Burana; but the specimens given must for the moment suffice. These love songs of the twelfth century are the last flowers of Latin, and in them we find again the natural movement and the unforced rhyme of the songs in Plautus. It is as though upon the original Latin briar the cultivated Greek rose had been grafted for centuries that tree brought forth a wealth of luxuriant fragrance, but at length it died; and then for one brief spell, before the Renaissance cut it down, the wild stock came again to life.

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BOLSHEVISM AND ASIA

T was natural that the moment the Bolsheviks had consolidated their power in Russia they should turn their eyes toward Asia. Revolutions in China, Persia and Turkey had preceded their advent to power by nearly a decade; India and French IndoChina had been directly involved in the war and had not yet recovered from its after effects; Afghanistan had entered into an era of court revolutions; the whole of the great continent, with the exception of Japan and little Siam, was in a state of political unrest and mental uneasiness. To the universal mischief makers and protagonists of a world revolution, Asia was a natural field for action: the flames were already there and needed but to be fanned to produce a great conflagration. Also, Europe was more vulnerable through its colonies and markets for raw material than by a direct blow which would have small chance of

success.

But in facing the problem of activity in Asia the Bolsheviks were confronted with both practical and dogmatic considerations. From a practical point of view they had to bear in mind the position of Russia as a result of the Revolution, and theoretically they were bound by the dogmatism of their Marxian creed as worked out and enlarged by Lenin.

As regards the first of these considerations they had been completely successful in their self-imposed task of destroying the achievements and prestige of Imperial Russia in Asia. The collapse of Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution had been even more complete in Asia than in Europe. In Persia and in the Far East, the two traditional zones of activity of pre-war Russian diplomacy, Russia's influence had vanished completely. The Eastern Chinese railway across Manchuria, the only large Russian railway on foreign territory, had been lost; Vladivostock and the whole Maritime Province of Siberia had been occupied by the Japanese, who were strongly tempted to remain there permanently; Georgia had proclaimed its independence and in Transcaucasia the Turks had regained a part of the territory lost after the RussoTurkish War of 1877-78. In Turkestan an attempt on a large scale, known as the Bassmatch movement, was made to form an

independent Central Asian Moslem Empire, and a similar bid to create a great Mongolian State absorbing the southern part of Siberia up to the Lake Baikal was being made by Baron Ungern Sternberg, one of the most romantic figures of those years. Finally, even in distant Chinese Turkestan, where Russian trade heretofore had enjoyed practically complete monopoly owing to the absence of any serious competitors, Russian exports and economic influence had completely collapsed. Such was roughly the position of Russia in Asia at the moment when the Soviet government, emerging victorious from the civil war, faced the world for the first time as an organised Power.

As regards the ideological side of the problem, we find the views of Lenin alone to be the gospel upon which the whole Asiatic policy of the Soviets is built. Since his death there has arisen in the ranks of the Bolsheviks a keen controversy as to the interpretation of the words of the "Master," but no one has ever attempted to challenge them. Indeed it is difficult to challenge the teachings of one about whom in an obituary article a prominent Soviet writer says: " Centuries will pass, the names of Sakya Muni, Buddha (?), Mohammed and Christ will be forgotten, but the name of Lenin will live."

Lenin was no newcomer in Asiatic policy. His first articles on the subject date from the Boxer Rising, when he violently took the side of the Chinese. Later, in the course of the RussoJapanese War, he sent a message to the Emperor of Japan conveying his wishes for a Japanese victory.

He gradually evolved a general theory on nationalism, partly based on Marxism and partly inspired by Karl Kautsky, which has an important bearing on later Soviet policy in Asia. The main idea in this theory is that nationalism is the outcome of capitalism. The national idea was conceived during the struggle of the nascent bourgeoisie against the international forces of feudal aristocracy and churchdom. In this first phase the bourgeoisie in its struggle found support from all the lower, or to use Lenin's favourite word," oppressed," classes of the nation, and therefore conceived its cause as a national cause. In the second stage the bourgeoisie took the lead in the industrialisation of the country, and became what was termed the capitalist class. Here a differentiation of interests set in between it and those lower classes which were to be known as Labour. Whereas it

remained in the interest of the capitalist producers to have a large State unified by common bonds of language and national traditions which permitted the exploitation of a secure inner market, labour becoming antagonistic to capital evolved tendencies of international class solidarity. Such is roughly the much discussed theory of Lenin which oddly enough he applied to his Asiatic policy. "Capitalism," he says, " has awakened Asia and provoked in it national movements which have a tendency to create national States best suited for the development of capitalism."

Alluding to Japan and partly to China, he pointed out that the birth of nationalism in Asia coincided with the advent of a Europeanised industrial bourgeoisie. This bourgeoisie fostered in the masses a hatred of Europeans, its economic competitors, but at the same time found itself antagonistic to its own native labour. Under these circumstances the line of action for the Soviets was clear. It was to support all the discontented elements in their newly engendered hatred for Europe, and at the same time to fight the nascent Asiatic bourgeoisie by setting labour against them. But the main bulk of the lower classes in Asia are peasants who are loyal to the bourgeoisie and follow their lead; therefore everything must be done to develop and awaken the still embryonic industrial proletariat. Thus it resulted that the general attitude of the Soviets towards the Asiatic nationalist movements depended on whether they allowed the development of communist and revolutionary tendencies in Asia or not. As Lenin himself puts it, only those bourgeois-democratic movements which allow the revolutionising of the masses, and therefore may be called national revolutionary movements, must be supported, whereas the purely patriotic nationalism of the higher classes must be opposed.

Thus conditioned by two realities, the reality of the position of Russia at the time, and by the purity of the doctrines of Lenin, which they considered thoroughly inviolable, the Bolsheviks set forth on their great adventure in Asia which they hoped was to give them the domination of the world.

The opening period of the relations between Soviet Russia and Asia may be defined as the " period of renunciation." Indeed the Soviets gave away everything and asked for nothing in return. Under such conditions it was not difficult to secure the friendliness of the Asiatics. This period started immediately after the advent