The Birmingham age-herald., 1919-04-26

 7 ENINE is by no means an easy
 man to know. For years he mas le enyeloped himself in a veil oi
 nvstery-a policy dictated as much oy personal inclination as by political mo tives and outside his own small clrcle or aiscinles and admirers there are not only very few Russians who may oe said to know him intimately put even comparatively few who have ever seen him. If therefore, he appears to 'no average Englishman as red-snir'eu' bieh-booted pirate chief, the fault IS chiefly of his own making. His an-ap- sorbing passion is the gospel of world revolution Born at Simbirsk on 'Aprh 10 1870. Vladimir Hitch Ulianon, ailas "I enine,o Iilitch," "Ilin',' "Tyin' IS hereditary noble, and the son or sta'e councillor His mother had small eS- tate in the Kazan government, and after her husbans death was Tn receipt of a state pension Lenines two sieeei' and his brother Dmitri were at one tiiiie all under police supervision, While ms brother Alexander was executed III loe' for complicty in terrorist plot asaiiiss the life of Alexander III. Brought up
 in the orthodox faith Lenine is one or tba few genuine Russians to be found among the Bolshevist leaders. After his course at the Simpirsk gymnasium in 1887, he entered the hazah university, only to be expelled ana pan ,sbed from Kazan a few months later for participating in an ant-goVerhmeh' student riot.
 In 1891, however, we find him attehoiils the university of Petrograd, where ne studied law and economics. In 1850 no made his first journey abroad to Hei many returning in the same year 'o petroerad where he was again arrested on account of his socialist activities. on tbis occasion he was exiled for three years to the village of Sushenskoe' HI eastern Siberia. being forbidden on the expiration of his sentence to resloe III any of the big cities, factory ceh'ers OF university towns of Russia. Alter ms release in 1900 he again went abroad. From this period begins his real career aS 1 socialist
 teen years are a long cycle Of socialist congresses abroad, eliminating In the Zimmerwald conferences of 1915, and ms dramatic return to Russia in the noto- rious "seaed wagon. During thls pc riod he visited many countries, including Epg,and. and made the acquaintance of all the revolutionary elements in Eu- rope His favorite residence however was at Poronin, in Galicia, from wnich point of vantage he was able to maineain a close contact with the revoluuonary movement in Russia.
 Is Lenine genius? Many hussiahS have denied it. and certainly there IS nothing in his personal appearance 10 suggest even faintly resemblance 10 the super-man. Short of stature, rather nlump. with short, thick neck, broad shoulders. round, red face lntepectual forehead, bald head. nose slightly turned up, brownish mustache, and short, stub by beard, he looks at the first glance more like provincial grocer than leader of men. And yet on second thoughts, there is something in those steely gray eyes that arrests the atten- lion something in that auizzing, half contemptuous, half-smiling look Which speaks of boundless self-confidence and conscious superiority. His knowledge or languages is above the average. He is a proficient German scholar. While ne writes and speaks English with toler- able acuracy. He is certainly by far the greatest intellectual force which the Rus sian revolution has yet brought to hght. It is not however to. his intellectual powers that he owes his predominating position inside his own party The al most fanatical respect with which ne IS | regarded by the men who are his col lea gues and who are at least as jealous of each other as politicians in other countries. is due to other qualities than mere intellectual capacity. Chief or these are his iron courage, his grim, re-
 lentless determination and his complete | lack of self-interest.
 To him capital is the fiend incarnate.
 nor asks for mercy
 1 Yet as an individual he is not without certain virtues. In the many attacks. both justified and unjustiied. which have been made against him, no breath
 of scandal has ever touched his private 1 fife He is married-according to all ac-
 counts singularly happily married-and. in a country where corruption has now reached it's apogee. he stands out head