26 OCTOBER 1951, Page 18

High-minded Revolutionaries

SIR. —I imagine I cannot be the only one of Your readers-who would welcome a- word of explanation from Sir Norman Angell regarding the passage in his recent article where he says: "The very high-minded men who in 1917 laid the foundations of the Russian Socialist State would have been utterly appalled if they could have foreseen what has actually happened. The State was to wither away ; not to become the most ruth- less instrument of police tyranny the world has known." Were. Kerensky and his associates Marxists who believed that the State would wither away ; or, on the other hand, were the murderers of the Czar and his family high-minded idealists?—Yours faithfully, J. S. MACARTHUR. South Luffenham Rectory, Oakham, Rutland.