PROPAGANDA AND ORGANIZATION PROPAGANDA must rush on far in advance of organization, and win over the human material on which organization is to work. I have always been an enemy of hasty and pedantic organization, for it is apt to lead to a dead mechanical result.
For this reason it is best to let an idea be broadcast from a centre by means of propaganda for a period, and then to search carefully through and examine for leaders among the human beings which has been assembled. It will often happen that men who do not show obvious capabilities at the start turn out to be born leaders.
It is totally wrong to imagine that abundance of theoretic knowledge is necessarily a characteristic proof of the qualities and energy necessary for leadership. The contrary is frequently the case.
A great theorist is seldom a great leader. An agitator is far more likely to possess those qualities— which will be unwelcome news to those whose work on a question is merely scientific. An agitator who is capable of communicating an idea to the masses has to be a psychologist, even though he be but a dema¬ gogue. He will always be better as a leader than the retiring theorist who knows nothing about men. For leadership means ability to move masses of men. The talent for producing ideas has nothing in common with capacity for leadership. But the union of theorist, organizer and leader in one man is the rarest pheno¬ menon on this earth ; therein consists greatness.
I have already described the attention I gave to propaganda in the earlier days of the Movement. Its function was to inoculate a small nucleus of men with the new doctrine, so as to shape the material out of which the