Lenin's letter to the All Russian Labor Federation sounds like the Sunday school song of a generation ago which sought to encourage industrious habits among the young, though its advice, if followed now, would violate child labor laws. It urged to work unceasingly: to work while the dew was sparkling, in and "mid springing flowers"; to work through the "sunny noon" and till the "last beam fadeth". But it was a joyous hymn, except the line which anticipated the coming of the night "when man works no more". It is this sort of advice, but set to another tune, that Lenin has given to the Russians.

The Government, so the report runs, was on the verge of driving men to work at the point of the bayonet, for the skilled workmen are slipping back to the land, where they can find a living, at any rate. Lenin has intervened, enjoining them to work, not for the zest of it, but for the triumph of their Soviet system. "Grin and bear it" is the suggested refrain of his hopeless hymn, which anticipates the coming of the night when there will be no more work because there will be no money to pay the workers. "They cannot live without pay", cries. Lenin, "and until the industrial machine gets properly running again there is no pay to give them".

How is this industrial machine to get started without capital or credit? Lenin's advice, echoing Gambetta's famous saying, "Du travail, toujours travail, et encore du travail", is excellent--the whole world needs it--but first of all it needs cash and credit. A lottery, as is now proposed, is a poor way to go about getting money, and refusal to recognize past obligations a poor way to go about getting credit. This is true even under a Government that pretends to be of the Workers, by the Workers and for the Workers. The New York Times.