BOLSHEVISM: AN INTERNATIONAL DANGER ITS DOCTRINE AND ITS PRACTICE THROUGH WAR AND REVOLUTION

BY

PAUL MILIUKOV, LL.D.

Author of "Russia and its Crisis"

NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 597--599 FIFTH AVENUE

PREFACE

Some time ago people who tried to prove to European public opinion that Russian Bolshevism was an imminent danger to the whole of the world's civilization invariably met with the ready objection, that Bolshevism belonged entirely and exclusively to Russia, and that it was no concern of any other country. Since then reflection and experience have taught people better, and we now often find that the word "Bolshevism" is applied to purely European phenomena which have little to do with Russian Bolshevism.

The truth is that Bolshevism has two aspects. One is international; the other is genuinely Russian. The international aspect of Bolshevism is due to its origin in a very advanced European theory. Its purely Russian aspect is chiefly concerned with its practice, which is deeply rooted in Russian reality and, far from breaking with the "ancient regime," reasserts Russia's past in the present. As geological upheavals bring the lower strata of the earth to the surface as evidence of the early ages of our planet, so Russian Bolshevism, by discarding the thin upper social layer, has laid bare the uncultured and unorganized substratum of Russian historical life. That is why Mr. Lenin may be considered both as a supporter of the Revolutionary Syndicalism of Georges

Sorel, so far as his international face is concerned, and as an inheritor of the old tradition of the Russian Pugachevs, Razins, and Bolotnikovs—the great social rebels of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

My object in this book is to study the international aspect of Bolshevism. A few months ago I planned a larger book, in which this subject was to enter as a first chapter, to be closely followed by the study of Russian Bolshevism from within, i.e. in its national aspect. Three more chapters were to be devoted to the study of anti-Bolshevist Russia, of the Russian borderlands, and of the relations between dismembered Russia and her former Allies. But now I see that it will take much more time and space than I expected to cover the whole ground. The first chapter has grown into a small book, while I was writing it, and I decided to publish it separately. The international aspect of Bolshevism has been, up to now, far less often treated as a whole than its purely Russian internal aspect. That is why this little work may fill a gap in the literature on Bolshevism until the appearance of a better and more elaborate exposition.

It also proved not so difficult and inconvenient as it might seem to detach the international side of Bolshevism from the Russian. In the first place, so far as its theory is concerned, Bolshevism is not Russian, but European, and international. This may not be universally known, and the first part of the book is written in order to trace Bolshevism to its European source.

Secondly, the Russian practice of Bolshevism did not enrich the European theory with any valuable positive data. Mr. Lenin's renowned "Decrees," as applied to Russian reality, were nothing but "scraps

Part III of the book undertakes to show what really has been done by Bolshevist propaganda to prepare the so-much-hoped-for World Revolution. People who are inclined to underrate the Bolshevist danger, or those who obstinately pretend that no reliable information is available on the subject, will be startled by the little selection of the first-hand evidence which even at present is sufficiently abundant—not only to prove the general trend of the Bolshevist Internationalist activity, but also to draw a more or less detailed picture of the methods and results of this activity. Attempts to revolutionize Germany and Austro-Hungary, and

My personal views of Bolshevism are sufficiently clear, and need not be emphasized any further. But I trust that the impartial reader will find my exposition of facts unbiassed and unprejudiced by any personal view. The partisans of Bolshevism will hardly find the work done by their heroes minimized by me. But I also hope that their enemies will not find that I have purposely exaggerated the Bolshevist danger by paying too much attention to it. The best way to win the game is not to represent one's adversary as being too stupid, or too dishonest and selfish, or too weak and careless. I prefer to see my enemy at his best in order

the better to understand and the better to defeat him.

CONTENTS

PART II

i. The Attempts to use the "Second International" (1914-1915) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51-53

Attempts to convoke International Socialists to discuss peace conditions (51-52). A new start in Berne for the International "proletarian class war" (52). The passage to the second stage (53).

DOCTRINE OF THE "THIRD INTERNATIONAL" (ZIMMER-WALD-KIENTHAL) AND ITS SPREAD IN 1916 . . . 53-63

The composition of the Zimmerwald Congress (53–54). The Extremist doctrine formulated (55–56). Formal call to mutiny waived (56–57). More outspoken language used by the International Socialist Commission in Berne, and by the Kienthal Conference (57). The success of Revolutionary Socialism in Germany (58–59). Zimmerwaldism in France (59–62). Zimmerwaldism in Great Britain under the cover of "Pacifism" (62–63).

3. THE FIRST VICTORY OF INTERNATIONAL EXTREMISM—IN THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION (1917) . . . . . 63-83

The two Revolutions: the National and the Defeatist—in March and November, 1917 (63). Why Russia proved particularly receptive to the Extremist propaganda (63–64). Lenin's view on Russia's unpreparedness for Socialism (65). Lenin's view on Russia's unpreparedness for Socialism (65). Preparedness for practical Anarchism and "Class War"; lack of conscious Nationalism (65–66). War weariness and desertion (66). The war—popular in its initial stage (66–67). Zimmerwaldism in Russia (67–68). The Tsar's blindness and the Duma's failure to enforce moderate concessions (68). Revolution—unavoidable and uncontrollable (68–69). The Duma's part in maintaining the "sacred national unity" for the first two months of Revolution (69–70). The part of the "Soviet" and the Extremist anti-war propaganda (70–72). M. Goldenberg's crude alternative: Kill the Army (and the War), or Kill the (Extremist) Revolution? (72–73). The Soviet's new start in foreign politics (73–74). Ambiguous attitude of Allied Socialists (74–75). Allied Socialist Ministers' failure to treat with the Soviet (75–76). Their unconscious help to Extremist tendencies (76–77). Albert Thomas's effort to bring about the "coalition" Government under Kerensky's

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guidance, conditional upon the army's new offensive (77-78). My personal attitude (78-79). A. Henderson's share in the Russian Revolution's failure (79). Russia ripe for Bolshevism (79-80). Moderate Socialists' loss of popularity (80-82). Lenin's demagogy (82-83). Pure Zimmerwaldism wins the game (83).

4. Influence of the Russian Revolution on European Internationalism, 1917 . . . . . . . 83-99

The failure of the Russian offensive makes the attitude of the Allied Moderate Socialists untenable (83–84). The chances of the "Democratic Peace" tested by the vicissitudes of the scheme for convoking the International Socialist Congress at Stockholm (84–85). German and neutral Socialists' part in the scheme (85–86). The Soviet's attempt under the Extremists' guidance to intercept the initiative (87–89). The "Third International" Conference, or the General Conference in Stockholm? (89–90). The Allied Socialists' conditional consent (90–91). The Russian delegation to Stockholm in London and Paris (91–92). The Russian retreat of July, its explanation by General Denikin (92–93). The change of attitude toward the Russian delegation (93–94). The Stockholm Conference shelved (94–96). The recrudescence of "militarism" in Berlin and Paris (96–90).

5. THE BOLSHEVIST COLLAPSE IN WAR AND TRIUMPH IN PROPA-GANDA, 1917-1919 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

No illusions as to the immediate results (99–100). "Direct action"—aim by itself (100–101). Tactics of reckless bluff (101). Negotiations—a means of propaganda (101–102). Trotsky's astonishment at German realistic "impudence" (103). Confident appeal to the "peoples" (103–104). Credulity as to the success of the coming Revolution in Germany (105–106). "Neither peace nor war" tactics (106). Bolshevist pamphlets in German trenches (107–108). The Soviet rule as a means of propaganda of a general conflagration (108–109). Germany's apparent success (109–110). The progress of Bolshevist propaganda in Germany (110–112). The German collapse (112). "The universal Revolution in sight" (112–113). "Soviets" or "The League of Nations": Lenin or Wilson? (113–114). The "Holy Alliance," or . . . . the Prinkipo proposal? (114–115). Prinkipo to be used for propaganda (115–116). Lenin's "sound strategy" to postpone operations until the moral disintegration of the enemy (117). Lenin's invitation to the First Congress of the Third International (118–119). A review of the Bolshevist parties in the world (119–120). Their programme (120–121). The Congress of the Second International at

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Berne on February 3–8, 1919 (121). Hjalmar Branting's resolution (121–123). Concessions to Bolshevism in other drafts of Resolutions (123–124). The pro-Bolshevist opposition at the Congress (124–125). The vote pro and contra Branting (125). The International danger of Bolshevism increased by that vacillation (125–127).

PART III

The existence of an organized conspiracy for a World Revolution (128-131).

I. THE "FIRST LINK IN THE CHAIN"—GERMANY AND CENTRAL EUROPE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

M. Josse's propaganda in Berlin (131-134). M. Josse's legacy (134). Bolshevik's alliance with Liebknecht against Scheidemann, as represented by Radek's mission (134-138). Their part in the January rising (138-139). Preparation for the Third Revolution (139-140). The Bolsheviks on the Rhine (140-141), and in other provinces of Germany (141). The part played by Bolsheviks in the March rising in Berlin (141-143). The Bolsheviks in Munich (143-144). The part played by Russian prisoners (145). The Bolsheviks' failure in Germany (146-147).

2. The Bolshevist Scheme for Feeding and Conquering Germany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The grain fund for the World Revolution (147-148). The Red Army (148-149). The scheme for the Revolutionary spring offensive (149-150). Preparations in East Prussia (150-151). Germans help Bolsheviks in occupied provinces of Russia (151-152). The tactics of the German Government (153-155). Negotiations with the Ukraine (155). Bolshevist propaganda in Poland (155-156). Bolsheviks and German public opinion (156-158). The wavering policy of the Allies and the part played by Kolchak and Denikin's offensive in the failure of the Bolshevist spring military action (158-159).

3. THE BOLSHEVIKS IN HUNGARY AND IN GERMAN AUSTRIA . 160-177

A Revolution backed by national feeling (159-160). The influence of the Belgrade Armistice and of the Peace Conference Policy (160-162) Count Karolyi in touch with the

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Bolsheviks (162-163). The false Red Cross Delegates and the Hungarian prisoners of war (164-165). The Bolshevist bloodless victory in Budapest (165-166). Wireless communications with Lenin (166-167). The Treaty between Bela Kun and Lenin (168-169). Self-confidence enhanced by General Smuts' mission (169). Hungarian Bolsheviks' counter-proposals (169-170). A start for the World Revolution (170-171). The moment of despondency (171-172). Bolshevism in the Austro-German Republic (172-173). Rioting in Vienna (173-174). A temporary success in Slovakia (175). Lenin's reliance on his methods (176). Forged banknotes (177).

4. The Bolshevist Propaganda in Neutral Countries . 178-189

The meeting of the Third International on March 2-5, 1919, in Moscow (178-179). A Socialist mission to Russia (179-180). The Moscow Conference—an answer to it (180-181). Bolshevist preparation for world propaganda (181-182). Neutral countries—the first stepping-stone (182-183). The Russian Bolshevist mission in Switzerland (183-184). Mr. Vorovsky's activity in Sweden (184-186). Bolsheviks in Norway (186). In Denmark (187). In Holland (187-188). The part played by Russian Red Cross institutions in Bolshevist propaganda (188-189).

5. Bolshevist Connections and Aims in the Allied Countries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Russian aim of the Bolshevist propaganda: "Handsoff Russia" (189–191). The German aim: mitigating the Peace Treaty conditions (191–192). A larger circle of propaganda (192–193). Two measures of judgment (193–194). The narrower circle of properly Bolshevist organized action (194). The Revolutionary Great Britain (194–195). Bolshevist pamphlets and manifestoes reach England (195–197). British Socialist organizations endorse "Communism" (197–200). The self-confident stage of the movement (200–202). "Direct (industrial) Action" versus "Parliamentary (political) Action" (202–204). Mr. A. Henderson's compromise (204–206). Bolshevist influences in the British industrial unrest (206–207). The Glasgow agitators (207–208). Programmes of the Clyde Workers' Committee and the Spartacist Union compared (208–212). Appeals to violence (212–213). The Parliamentary Committee's opposition to Extremism (213–214). Labour leaders' wavering attitude (214–215). The "Triple Alliance" at work (215–216). The Southport resolutions (216–219). The Trade Unions' Congress at Glasgow (219–221). Vorwārts on the results of the

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British Extremist movement (221–222). Bolshevism in France (222). The elements of difference from England (222–223). The elements of similarity (223–224). Albert Thomas and Bolshevism (224–225). France and Internationalism (226–227). The Lucerne Congress (227–229). Extremism victorious (229). The International strike of July 21 (229–231). The failure explained by Jouhaux (231–233). The Syndicalist Congress at Lyon (233–235). Extremist elements in the Syndicalist resolution (235–237). Bolshevism in Italy checked by Nationalism (237–238). Attempts at strikes defeated (238–240). The November General Elections in France, Belgium, and Italy (240–243).

6. The Bolshevist Propaganda outside Europe. . . 243-294

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Connections with I.W.W. (283). "I.W.W.'s" programme of Revolution (283–285). Revolutionary elements in the Labour movement (285). America's peculiarity (286). Failure of the Industrial Conference makes trade-unionism join the National Strike movement (286–287). The miners' strike as differentiated from the steel strike (287–288). The Government's firm stand (288–289). Raid on Extremist organizations and disclosures on the "Union of Russian Workers" (289–290). The Russian manifesto planning a Bolshevist Revolution (290–291). Measures against the aliens (291). Deadlock in negotiations with Labour (292). National Socialism, tradeunionism (293). Farmers as anti-Bolshevist agents (293–294).

CONCLUSION.

Lenin's prophesies (295). Will the Russian Revolution fail? (295–296). Will the "World Revolution" succeed? (296). International danger of Bolshevism diminishing; its catchwords still alive (296–297). "Nonintervention" movement consistently Bolshevistic (297-298).

EPILOGUE.

A new wave of Eolshevism in Europe as a result of changed policy toward Russia (299-300). The Third International meets in Amsterdam (300-301). The Strassburg Conference's attempt at a reconstruction on a larger basis (302). Last symptoms (303).

PART I

THE INTERNATIONAL DOCTRINE OF BOLSHEVISM

i. The Origin of the Bolshevist Doctrine (1905–1914).

It is a moot question whether Bolshevism and its European counterpart, "Revolutionary Syndicalism," can be called Socialism at all. Mr. Lenin, in his very first speech after returning to Revolutionary Russia through Germany in the famous "sealed railway carriage" (April 1917), exhorted his followers to throw away Socialism as "dirty linen," and to unfold the banner of "Communism."

It comes practically to the same thing when Georges Sorel classifies his "Revolutionary" Syndicalism, not as a breach with Marxian Socialism, but rather as a return to the true, the initial reading of Karl Marx's doctrine. The distinction between "Revolutionary" and "Reformist" Socialism exists in Marxism itself, and it develops into a patent contradiction in its history. While the Marxism of 1848 is predominantly Revolutionary and Utopian, its application to the Parliamentary life of German Social Democracy is essentially reformist and scientific. Marx's followers had to choose between the Utopian "Communist Manifesto" of 1847

ignorant in order not to see that the democratic overthrow which is being achieved under our eyes presents a bourgeois character. One must possess a most naïve optimism in order to forget just how little the working masses are informed as to the aims and methods of Socialism. Therefore, so long as the working class lacks a conscious organization, so long as it does not possess the necessary education to carry on the class struggle against the bourgeoisie, there can be no question about a socialist revolution."

war of 1904, was to be used as fuel for a universal conflagration in countries better prepared to experiment in Socialism.

The practical aim and result of this protest against
London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd.

demonstrates "the beginning and the end of Syndicalism."

This is where Revolutionary Syndicalism differentiates itself from Socialism. "Socialism, like any other party organism," M. Lagardelle goes on to say, "touches the workman only as an elector, as a member of the political society mixed together with citizens belonging to other classes. On the contrary, the class organization considers him exclusively in his quality of working man as a member of the economic society, i.e. at the moment of his dissociation from all other classes and his opposition to them. Party and class thus find themselves at opposite points of view, and their tactics can only be antagonistic." Of the two notions, "class" is a natural combination, while "party" is artificial and intellectual, whether it be "Radical," "Socialist." or "Labour."

Here it is also that Revolutionary Syndicalism abjures the basic idea of Democracy: the political equality of all members of human society held under common obligation to adapt their individual benefits to the interests of the whole. "The working class," M. Lagardelle writes, "makes use of political Democracy only the better to destroy it." It does not recognize any other law or obligation but the law of "class war."

Says M. Merrheim (Mouvement Socialiste, February 1910): "Syndicalism does not confine itself to any legal boundaries; it would contradict its very substance if it did. It breaks through every barrier, legal or illegal, which would stem its tide. Moreover, it does this not by fits and starts, not through mediation, but every day." There is only one thing which may indeed retard this rapid course toward the unknown, to the

which were going to mix themselves in the democratic bog. Violence gives back to the proletariat their natural weapon of the class struggle, by means of frightening the bourgeoisie and "profiting by the bourgeois dastardness (la lâcheté bourgeoise) in order to impose on them the will of the proletariat."

the fatherland, because the institution of the army and the idea of fatherland help to maintain the existence of the State." This sentence, preceding by ten years Zimmerwald and Kienthal, is quite seriously meant. "The Syndicalists," affirms M. Lagardelle, "fight the State for the same reason as they fight the employers: both are joint forces which play into the hands of each other. The destruction of State is a preliminary condition to the truimph of the proletariat."

possible only as long as it bases itself on the fiction of general 'citizenship' and throws into the shade the difference between working men, capitalists, landed proprietors, etc. The State will disappear the very day when it will no more represent general interest as opposed to the interests of individuals. Should political parties be composed exclusively of workmen, capitalists, and agriculturists, and should they pursue their material aims alone, without minding such general tasks which political society is expected to solve, the State machinery thus left to work in the vacuum will run down by itself." Economic organization will take the place of political society, and it will take the form of a federation of autonomous syndicates and professional unions.

An important change in this attitude toward the State has since taken place. With the advent of Mr. Lenin's millennium in Russia, the obscure transitional stage from the general strike to the Social Revolution was filled up with new "inspiring" images much more in harmony with the "violence" theory. Of course, Mr. Lenin, too, is sure of the final destruction of the State institutions. But meantime he is quite determined to use them for "the dictatorship of the proletariat." A few weeks before his triumph in Petrograd Mr. Lenin wrote his leaflet entitled: Shall the Bolsheviks remain in Power? Here he bluntly states his attitude toward the State. Of course, he says, we preached the destruction of the State as long as it was in possession of our enemies. But why should we do it after having ourselves taken the helm? The State is, indeed, an organized rule by a minority... of privileged classes. Let us in our turn

substitute our minority for theirs, and let us run the machinery!

Says Brouilhet (Les Conflicts): "The masses expect to be treated with violence, and not to be persuaded. They always obediently follow when a single man or a clique shows the way. Such is the law of collective psychology." One might suggest that it is not the best way to educate the masses in political consciousness, and that the "law of collective psychology" is here used in the same manner as in Macchiavelli's theory or in the practice of Autocracy. But Revolutionary Syndicalism does not shirk the comparison. Its political romanticism, its excursions in the sphere of the subconscious, its repudiation of democratic principles, its hero-worship—in short, all its psychology it shares in common with the opposite, the reactionary pole of that generation of French writers and politicians. The observation has been more than once made, that over the head of Democracy—Syndicalism stretches forth its hand to Royalism. Sorel and Berth, indeed, fight the same enemy as Charles Maurras, and very often they use the same weapon.

Government by minority: This is the last word of Syndicalism which it has in common with Bolshevism, not only in theory, but also in practice. That is why there exists such a strong undercurrent of sympathy with the Bolshevist experiment in Russia amongst all partisans of a direct social revolution the world over. The negative side of the Revolutionary Syndicalist doctrine, its repudiation of Democracy, is also common to Bolshevism. Both are against Parliamentary action, against universal suffrage, against everything which provides for equal rights to every "citizen," and thus, quite consistently, against guarantees of political freedom for all. Under the regime of class

Moderate Socialism even then persisted in its conciliatory attitude. "Why does this tyrannic minority lead the Socialist party in the way it is not willing to go?" M. Fournière asks in his book on The Socialist Crisis (1908), and he gave a scathing answer. "All of us, beginning with extreme Anarchists and ending with genuine Parliamentary Socialists, drag along the same chain, the chain of fear, lest we should appear not so advanced as people who lead. Pale and dis-

concerted, we all press forward in a state of revolutionary panic which would be ridiculous were not the abyss so close. How shall we keep clear of it when the tail carries the head with it? " It is very interesting to remark that this was in 1911 the opinion of M. Albert Thomas, the prominent Reformist Syndicalist, who has since played such an important part in organizing the munition work of his country. "The party has not the courage," says he, "explicitly to oppose ideas to ideas, tactics to tactics, doctrine to doctrine: it sticks to 'unanimity formulas,' which, owing to their fatally uncertain character, can have neither the value nor the fecundity of a rule of action." We shall see later on that Albert Thomas himself succumbed to the same deficiency of Moderate Socialism.

2. THE PROMOTERS OF THE INTERNATIONALIST DOCTRINE IN THE WORLD WAR.

The World War thus found the World Socialism in a state of confusion and helplessness. It looked, though, as if war in itself might bring about a stoppage on the edge of the "abyss." Had not Sorel himself in his book On Violence foreseen that a great war might stiffen the energy of the bourgeoisie, and bring to power men possessing the will to govern? On the other hand, was it not more likely that a war of exhaustion would give a new chance for a revival of anti-militarist and anti-patriotic propaganda, having the avowed aim of dissolving the army, ruining the "fatherland," discarding the State institutions, and thus helping enormously towards some attempts on a larger scale at a proletarian upheaval?

We need not dwell long upon the activity of the Socialists who made "sacred union" with the bourgeois parties. Everybody knows how important their contribution was, both in material and moral preparation, for the allied victory. But it is equally important to point out that their doctrine was and

remained inconsistent with their new tactics of "national defence." Even now—and perhaps now less than ever—they have not found the "courage" to oppose "ideas to ideas, tactics to tactics, doctrine to doctrine." Practically they stuck to many internationalist doctrines on which, quite consistently, their opponents have based their Extremist tactics. That is why, strong as their national policy was, they have always been powerless to reconcile it with their own international theory. That is also why they were gradually losing their hold over the masses, while their opponents were gaining ground. One cannot lead if he does not know whither he goes.

I must particularly mention three leading ideas which have helped the Extremists to gain the lead while they perplexed the Moderates and threw them off the scent. The first is that wars are unavoidable in a world of capitalist production, and they can only be stopped by the international victory of Socialism.¹ The second idea is that all capitalist societies are

This point is often mentioned in the resolutions of patriotic Socialists. E.g., that is how the Allied Socialists who met in London in February 1916 expressed this idea in their resolution. "The conference does not fail to recognize the existence of general and deep causes of the European conflict, which is a monstrous product of antagonisms that rend asunder the capitalist society, and of a policy of aggressive colonialism and imperialism, which International Socialism has never ceased to combat, and for which all Governments bear their portion of responsibility." . . "Remaining true to the principles of the International," they expressed their hope that soon the proletarians of all countries, recognizing the identity of their fundamental interests, will find themselves united against capitalist militarism and imperialism. The manifesto of the first National Congress of the French Socialist party during the war (December 29, 1915) declares: "The Socialist party knows that as long as the iniquity of capitalism lasts . . . the dangers of war will co-exist with capitalism."

Internationalist Socialist of the Entente pretends not to make war on the "German people"; he only fights the German "Government," while he also preserves the right, which is also his duty, of fighting his own Government for being "imperialistic."

The "self-determination" principle, if applied in its larger and more general sense, may, of course, apparently justify such a universal use of the term "imperialism." Great Britain may well accept as its slogan Imperium et libertas. And Russia may claim not to be "imperialistic" at all, but self-sufficient within her immense space of one-sixth of the world's surface. Neither one nor the other may ask for annexations. Nevertheless, both Great Britain and Russia possess some "oppressed" nationalities "annexed" many centuries ago. Such is the law of the growth in any large state. Well, this is sufficient for them to be declared "imperialistic," and for "oppressed" nationalities, such as Ireland, Egypt, India, the Baltic Provinces, Ukraine, Georgia, to be taught to ask for "disannexation."

This is a state of mind—or, rather, the state of doctrine—which was bound to bring patriotic and national Socialists into trouble, while depriving them of any firm basis in their quarrel with the Internationalists.

¹ Cf. the declaration of the Parliamentary Socialist Group in France on the occasion of the vote of war credits, on June 15, 1917: "The Socialist party affirms that it considers it to be its right and even its direct duty to seek, with the Socialists of other countries, for the means of bringing the governed to impose their will on the governors, to use Mr. Wilson's expression." Cf. the Daily News of January 29, 1918: "The people of Germany, like every other peaceful people, are the victims of a system which places the control of mankind in the hands of military castes."

The latter only were consistent with their common doctrine, while opposing the idea of the solidarity of classes to that of the solidarity of the nation, in war time. The tactics of August 4, 1914, were certainly inconsistent with this international doctrine of Socialism. That is why Mr. Lenin's argument was irrefutable, when, quite a year and a half before the Bolshevist victory in Russia, he was speaking in his customary style on the subject of the French and other national Socialists: and he said, "Not only capitalists are lying, but also people like Renaudel, Sembat, Longuet (Longuet, too!), Scheidemann, Hyndman, Kautsky, Plekhanov and Co. Powerless diplomatists, they greatly injure the workmen's movement by their defence of a fiction of unity, because thus they impede the necessary union between the opposition groups in all countries, in order to create the Third Internationale."

The immediate aim of Bolshevism is here quite clearly stated. The "Second International" was to be proclaimed dissolved and non-existent, because of the "treason" of national Socialists, who voted war credits in all belligerent countries, thus forsaking the ground of International Socialism. Instead of that "Second International," the headquarters of which had been transferred during the war from Brussels to the Hague, a new "International" was to be created, which should include only the revolutionary minorities of International Socialism, excluding the Parliamentary and Reformist majorities. "One must start a move-

N. Lenin. On the task of the opposition in France. A letter to Comrade Sarafoff, published on February 10, 1916.

ment," says the Bulletin of the Socialist International Committee, created in Berne for this very purpose, "which will have strength enough to eliminate at once the leading social-patriotic organizations. . . . A new International can only be built on the basis of the unfaltering principles of Revolutionary Socialism. The allies of Governments, Ministers, domesticated Deputies, advocates of Imperialism, agents of capitalist diplomacy, grave-diggers of the Second International, cannot take part in its creation."

It was here that Germany saw her chance. Among the documents published by the "Committee on Public Information" in Washington there is one which is worth remembering:

CIRCULAR.

February 13, 1915.

Press Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Berlin,

TO

ALL AMBASSADORS, MINISTERS AND CONSULAR OFFICIALS IN NEUTRAL COUNTRIES.

You are hereby advised that in the country to which you are accredited special offices are to be established for the organization of propaganda in the countries of the Powers which are in a state of war with Germany. The propaganda will be connected with the stirring up of social unrest and strikes resulting therefrom; of revolutionary outbreaks; of separatism among the component parts of the States; of civil war; and will also comprise agitation in favour of disarmament and the discon-

The German Bolshevik Conspiracy, War Information Series, No. 20, October 1918. Signed by the Committee on Public Information, George Creel, Chairman. The document quoted is published in the Appendix I, under the heading "Documents circulated by the anti-Bolsheviks in Russia." These documents were sent from Petrograd to the Volunteer Army Staff in Novocherkassk in December 1917.

tinuance of the war butchery. You are requested to co-operate and to favour in every way the managers of the said offices. These persons will present to you proper credentials.

Signed) BARTHELM

When the long-looked-for and "carefully-prepared" war finally broke out in the following year, "political chiefs" had been found amongst the Russian refugees of the "Defeatist" type, while "well-chosen agents" among the German Social Democracy had done what they could in order to secure "influential people" in neutral and, if possible, even in the enemy countries. There is no doubt that "material means" have been spent in profusion. It is unnecessary to say that not

every "head" or "chief" was to be bought by money; but when aims coincided and lines of action ran parallel, why not use all means to come as soon as possible to the universal outbreak which will destroy even such "capitalists" as were shortsighted enough to help their enemies with money?

The point is that, owing to these tactics of supporting extremists in enemy countries the demarcation line between Parliamentary and Revolutionary Socialism, which, as we have seen already, has not been very distinctly drawn in doctrine, was bound to be finally obliterated in a search for internal enemies in conflicting States. French and British Moderate Socialists used to send congratulations to German Spartacists, while German "Majority" Socialists, through the intermediacy of neutrals, encouraged French and British Defeatists, Bourderons and Marrheims, Lansburys and Morels.¹

Of course, it is chiefly German Social Democracy which is especially responsible for fanning into flame the extreme internationalist doctrine, for giving it a new body and setting astir its spirit. German Social Democracy was also rent in twain by two opposite currents. One was ready to support the State in every war, on the principle, "My country, right or wrong." The other ready to oppose the State also in every war, on the principle of the "class war" against all "capitalist" Governments. There were between the two extremes the same intermediate shades of opinion: one ready

^<sup>1 George Lansbury wrote in the then Daily Herald: "To make our protest effective the working men on whom transport and communication depends ought to oppose its use; they must strike against war!" I find this quotation in Larkin's book on National Socialism.

^<sup>1 At a later date (July 30, 1919) Mr. Bourtsev's newspaper La Cause Commune communicated that Parvus' savings, confiscated at the Copenhagen banks, amount to five million crowns.

with the full success of Parvus' propaganda. On November 17, 1917, the delegation, composed of "scoundrels" of the same type (Karl Radek, popularly called "Kradek," i.e. the "thief," Ganetsky and Orlowsky), announced in its official organ that "Comrade Parvus conveyed to them the greetings of the German Social Democrat Majority, which declares its solidarity with the Russian proletariat in its demands for a direct armistice and immediate peace negotiations on the basis of democratic peace without annexations and indemnities."

German Social Democrats, indeed, had good reasons to rejoice. The great success of Revolutionary Extremism in Petrograd has crowned their two years' exertions. It is true that the German Moderate Majority, while greeting the Russian Spartacists, forgot the French proverb, "tel qui rit vendredi, dimanche pleurera."

"I recollect," Mr. Grumbach says, "a discussion I had one day with Lenin, on the probability of a revolution in Germany. Lenin had told me that he firmly believed in a revolution in Germany, if only revolution could be first victorious in Russia." Of the two, Lenin and Scheidemann, it was Lenin who was right. What had been meant initially by Germans to be nothing but a ruse de guerre against the Entente has since become a very effective means for bringing about the international conflagration. Of course, this result has been achieved, not owing to some intrinsic value of the mischievous doctrine, used as an explosive, but chiefly owing to the exceptional state of mind of the European nations, produced by a protracted war. The only people who really knew what they were driving at were Mr. Lenin's partisans. They used

the war-time psychology of masses, conflicting Governments' and peoples' enmities, the inconsistencies of Moderate Socialists, and last, but not least, the "scoundrels"—espionage and secret diplomatists' unrelenting activity for their own unvarying purpose of spreading Bolshevism all over Europe.

PART II

THE PROGRESS OF BOLSHEVISM THROUGH WAR AND REVOLUTION

4

• (i) The disruption of the Second "International";
• (2) The Zimmerwald-Kienthal doctrine as a basis for the Third, the "revolutionary" International;
  • (3) The Bolshevist advent in Russia;
• (4) Brest-Litovsk—a temporary eclipse of Bolshevist schemes for Europe; and
  • (5) A renewed Bolshevist attack on the bour-

geoisie and democracy in Europe, through the intermediary of European "Spartacists."

The international aspect of Bolshevism can be clearly seen in this connection.

It is necessary to write a book in order to collect the overwhelming evidence which may be adduced as a proof of the statements made. Lacking the space, I may be permitted to give a few hints and illustrations as to the chief points of the whole story.

I. THE ATTEMPTS TO USE THE "SECOND INTERNATIONAL" (1914-15).

It begins, in 1914, with a series of unsuccessful attempts, backed by the German Social Democrats, to organize a meeting of Socialist representatives of all countries, in order to discuss the question of peace, on the basis of the status quo (all these attempts are posterior to the battle of the Marne). The Italian and Swiss Socialists, Turati and Greulich, were first to formulate a proposal to this effect at their Congress, at Lugano, on September 22, 1914. The Dutch Socialist, Troelstra, succeeded in moving the International Socialist Bureau to Amsterdam, in place of Brussels, and the reorganized Bureau, with the full approval of the German Government, proposed to convoke an International Socialist Congress at the Hague. The French Administrative Committee of the party refused to attend; the Independent Labour Party nominated Mr. A. Henderson as its representative. The Congress did not meet. At that time a meeting of Revolutionary Syndicalists in France proposed to remove the centre

2. Doctrine of the "Third International" and its Spread in 1916.

Only the Italian and Rumanian Socialist parties were officially represented at Zimmerwald. The Independent Labour Party as well as the British Socialist party accepted the invitation, but were prevented from attending by the Government, which refused passports to

selves not on the ground of national solidarity with the class of employers, but on the ground of the international solidarity of the proletariat and of class war, met in order to re-establish international bonds torn asunder, and to call the working class to recollect their duty towards themselves. . . . Proletarians! At the beginning of the war we gave our working power, our courage, our endurance to the service of the ruling classes. Now we must begin a struggle for our own cause, for the sacred aim of Socialism, for the liberation of oppressed peoples and enslaved classes by means of an uncompromising proletarian class war

What remained, then, for the "left wing" to subscribe to more than that? The Russians, the Poles, and "comrade" Radek wished the manifesto to state in a more outspoken way that no real peace was possible unless the very basis of the social structure is changed, and that one must accordingly "attack the very foundations of society" without waiting any longer for the results of the "imperialistic stage" to develop in full. "The struggle for peace must simultaneously be a revolutionary struggle against capitalism."

Owing to the indecision of the more judicious section of the Conference, the formal call to mutiny was omitted from the text of the manifesto; but it still remained there so far as the spirit of the manifesto is concerned. The members of the Conference did not wish, for the same reason, to make a show of organizing a new International; but they left behind them a nucleus of the new organization, the "International Socialist Commission at Berne," whose President was to be the notorious Robert Grimm, a man who knew how to combine "extremely Radical declarations with an entirely opportunist practice." As, for the time being, "extremely Radical declarations" were all that were wanted for the Extremist propaganda, Grimm was the right

man, particularly if led by one of the Oriental throng, the "Italian" of Russian descent, Angelica Balabanova.

The I.S.C. at Berne has completed everything that was missed by Lenin in Zimmerwald, while speaking always in the name of the "second Zimmerwald Conference" at Kienthal—which was even more mysterious than the first one. The amendment of the first Conference was expanded into the glowing appeal of May 1, 1916, to the "conquest of political power and abrogation of private property by the working class" as the "only means to prevent war in future," and to the struggle by "all means at their disposal" for "immediate peace without annexations."

The resolution of the Kienthal Conference declared that all demands of the "bourgeois or Socialist pacifism," such as limitation of armaments, obligatory arbitration, and even the building up of "small nations" into States, are nothing but "new illusions," and that the only "durable" peace can be attained by the Socialist upheaval. Moreover, the Kienthal Conference—or the I.S.C. at Berne in its name—declared the former Executive Committee of the I.S.B. at the Hague guilty of "National Socialism," and put it under the close supervision of the "organizations which joined the I.S.C. at Berne." For these a special "discipline" was proclaimed necessary, which put them "above all other party duties." "The nationalist sections of the internationalist proletariat who have forgotten their supreme duty, by this very fact, set free their members from every obligation towards them."

Here was the "Third International" in a nutshell. Its doctrine and the nucleus of its organization were

now ready. It was the time to put its propaganda in hand and for its practical application.

At that very time the question had been raised in the Reichstag and in the country about the coming split between Parliamentary and Revolutionary Socialism, and the "central" elements were thwarting the decision. The split was finally achieved in January 1917, owing to the aggressive attitude of the Majority Socialists, who ejected from the party such members and local organizations as agreed with the resolutions of a Minority Conference of January 7th, held in Berlin.

The new Minority Conference at Gotha, April 6-8, had decided to organize a new "Independent S.D. Party." The "Spartacus" group took part in it, while the other Extremist section, the "International Socialists," remained outside. The influence of the Russian Revolution on the organization and activity of the new party is quite obvious. Its popularity among the masses may be inferred from the fact that while the membership of the old party decreased in the six months following the creation of the new party from 243,061 to 150,000, the numbers of the paying members of the Independent Party amounted at the same date (September 1917) to 120,000.

Serious attempts at propagating the Zimmerwald-Kienthal doctrine and tactics were also made in the Entente countries. Here also they have not achieved the complete victory of revolutionary extremism, but they have strengthened extreme tendencies, and thus have made necessary a move to the left in the general attitude of the parties. Bourderon—one of the two French representatives at Zimmerwald—on his return to France, proceeded to ask the Seine Federation to recall Socialist Ministers from the Cabinet, to dissolve the "sacred union," to refuse war credits, and to blame the Parliamentary fraction and the administrative organ of the party for their tactics. Then M. Longuet, the leader of the Minority, who, too, had visited Switzerland and had seen Bernstein and Kautsky, declared that "without Internationalism there can be no Socialism," and demanded the re-establishment of relations with all sections of the International, including German Social Democracy. The number of mandates to the National Congress received by the representatives of

the three currents of French Socialism represented in figures their comparative strength:

recruiting for them their adepts, their adherents, their zealous followers."

Thus the Majority paved the way to the final victory of the Minority, which actually took place later, under the influence of the Russian Revolution.

It is unnecessary for me to expatiate upon the fact that the same conversion has taken place in public opinion of England. The only difference was perhaps that, owing to the comparative weakness of Socialism proper in this country, the anti-war and pro-"International" propaganda here took to the less offensive watchword of "Pacifism," and that its teaching, primarily confined to a small group of idealists, only lately and slowly has evolved into a demagogic campaign by class war protagonists. Of course, at the very beginning of the war even here there was no lack of direct German influences, together with idealistic and religious motives, working for socialistic solutions and "conscientious objections" to war.

As early as April 1915, at the Congress of Norwich, Messrs. Keir Hardie, Jowett, Bruce Glasier, and others had already spoken for the benefit of German "comrades" against . . . British . . . imperialism and militarism; they already advocated direct international socialistic action for immediate peace. The Congress decided that Socialists must renounce fighting, even in case of enemy invasion, and by 243 votes to 9 they carried a vote of condemnation of the Labour party for its participation in the recruiting campaign. But it is particularly in the second half of 1916 that the so-called (unjustly) "Pacifist" propaganda began to influence larger circles of public opinion. Anyhow, when the Russian Revolution broke out in March 1917

there existed a ready current of sympathy for its most extreme achievements.

3. THE FIRST VICTORY OF INTERNATIONAL EXTREMISM —IN THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION.

There were two Russian Revolutions which were quite dissimilar: that of March and that of November 1917. The first was national and patriotic, and was led by the Duma representatives. The second was due to the Internationalist propaganda, introduced into Russia from the outside. It was led by the group of Russian refugees we know, and it was strongly supported by International Socialists, not only of extreme, but also of more moderate description. The national Revolution of March originated in a strong pro-war sentiment which had brought Russian public opinion to the conclusion that no victory could be won under autocratic rule, suspected of pro-Germanism. The Extremist (Bolshevist) Revolution of November was "Defeatist" in its origin, and it won the victory in Russia for the Zimmerwald and Kienthal International doctrine.

Why is it that Russia of all countries has become a field for social experiment? Many causes peculiar to Russia combine to make this country particularly receptive of the Extremist international propaganda. "Defeatism" was in Russia not the result of recent anti-militarist and anti-patriotic propaganda, but an old tradition amongst intellectuals, contracted during many decades of years of struggle against the Autocracy. Lenin only tried to make use of that old habit when at the beginning of the war he began his Defeatist

to Socialism other than political Democracy, he will inevitably come to absurd and reactionary conclusions both in an economical and a political sense. If some workmen ask us, 'Why not achieve the maximum programme?' we shall answer them by pointing out just how alien to Socialism the democratic masses are, how undeveloped the class contradictions, how unorganized the proletarians. Just try to organize hundreds of thousands of workmen all over Russia! Try to teach millions to sympathize with your programme! Try to do that without limiting yourself to sonorous but empty anarchical phrases, and you will see at once that the largest possible realization of democratic reforms is necessary and requisite for the spreading of socialistic enlightenment, and for introducing appropriate organization."

This is all very wise, but this sound reasoning was invariably thrown overboard at the moment of revolutionary outbreaks. Were not, indeed, these outbreaks chiefly due to that very unpreparedness of the masses, which precluded in advance the possibility of any lasting result? Was it not that very lack of organization and of the political education of the masses which made them blindly believe in the Bolshevists' promises and follow their demagogical lead? Revolutionary Socialism repudiated State institutions; but the Russian peasants have never learnt to defer to the State. They were, so to say, born anarchists, and Tolstoy reflects very adequately the soul of the Russian peasant. Revolutionary Socialism preached class war and hatred of superior social strata. But in Russia the upper social layers were of comparatively recent origin; to a large extent they owed their privileged position to

the State, and were bound to yield even to a gentle pressure from below. Revolutionary Socialism execrated "imperialism" and "nationalism"; but the Russian masses simply did not know anything about the international situation. They were unable to consider the interests of the State as a whole, and as opposed to the interests of other State units. They practically had not yet reached the stage of conscious nationalism and patriotism.

To speak to these masses about "war aims" was labour lost; but they understood the weariness of war exertions and the hardships of life in the trenches. They did not understand a word of the so-called "democratic" formula about "annexations" and "contributions" and "self-determination," but they only too well understood what "immediate peace" meant; while "fraternization" with the enemy in the trenches was quite easy for men who had learnt to hate the name of "German," but proved unable to connect that abstract idea with people who, after a laborious day of warfare, treated them to vodka and schnapps and called them "brethren." When, into the bargain, they were promised the long-hoped-for "partition" of the land as soon as as they returned home, it was easy to understand that desertion from the ranks, in order to reach home first, was not at all considered to be a disgrace and a crime.

After all, in spite of what is said, the war—perhaps for the first time in Russian history—was, at the beginning widely popular, and Russian Socialists were forced to acknowledge the fact. Berlin newspapers were publishing telegrams about "Revolution in Russia" during the first days of the war. Far from

this being true, a strike which—perhaps not without German "material help"—was about to start was at once stopped by the workmen themselves as soon as war broke out. "Unlike the Russo-Japanese War, the present war has become popular among the masses," a Social Democratic report stated to the Conference in Copenhagen. "A great majority of Russian citizens," says the Russian correspondent of a German Socialist newspaper (Leipziger Volkszeitung), "and among them many Social Democrats, are convinced that Germany is waging an aggressive war... the war is becoming more and more popular in Russia... the present situation bears no resemblance to that which existed ten years ago. The war was then a dynastic war, while to-day we are witnessing a people's war."

"There is no desire that Russia should be defeated to be observed among the working classes," states another correspondent of the Russian Social Democratic newspaper in Paris.

However, the socialistic fractions of the Duma at once differentiated themselves from their European comrades by abstaining from the vote of war credits. Later on, the idea of Zimmerwald was accepted by all Russian Socialists: Kerensky, Tsereteli, and Tshkeidse called themselves Zimmerwaldians. Five working men deputies of the Social Democratic fraction of the Duma were found in possession of a draft of a Defeatist resolution drawn up by Lenin. They were put on their trial and condemned to deportation to Siberia. This only made things worse. As early as 1916 a Defeatist propaganda was rife among workmen and in the army, as well as among the prisoners of war in Germany.

A Russian newspaper, the Russian Messenger, published in Berlin, was regularly smuggled into the Russian trenches. I personally, as a member of the Duma, received many letters from soldiers at the front which proved that the demoralization of the army had already begun before the Revolution of March 1917.

Revolution became unavoidable in Russia after the autumn of 1915, when the Tsar ignored the last attempt of the Duma majority to bridge the chasm between him and public opinion by working out a moderately progressive programme and nominating a Ministry "enjoying the confidence of the country." Moreover, he dismissed, one by one, the eight members of the Cabinet (among them Mr. Sazonov) who were inclined to adopt a conciliatory attitude, and he put in their place unswerving reactionaries. On the other hand, public opinion became more radical, and would not be satisfied with anything less than a Parliamentary regime. Revolutionary and republican tendencies began to take root.

A revolutionary overthrow during the war was by itself almost equivalent to a catastrophe. It is easy to understand that the more experienced politicians could not at once decide to join hands with the revolutionaries; but the Tsarist regime has proved itself incapable of organizing national defence, and it was strongly suspected of the wish to prevent revolution by a speedy end of the war which would be to the benefit of the Germans. Revolution was now becoming necessary for patriotic reasons. The more advanced groups begun to plan a dynastic overthrow. The scandals of Court life under the influence of the famous Rasputin served to endorse the decision. The assas-

eight months and four consecutive changes of Government to make the change complete.

The whole movement was led by men who evidently were familiar with the ideas of Extremist internationalism and who fully shared its aims. Through a Special "Committee for the Contact" of the Soviet with the Government they, from the very beginning, tried to wring from the Government decisions necessary for the weakening of discipline in the army, the grant of funds for propaganda, and, finally, urged the acceptance of the Zimmerwald doctrine in foreign politics. When they met with resistance they started an agitation

against the Ministers of War and Foreign Affairs (Mr. Guchkov and myself). Bolshevism at that first period of the Revolution had not yet differentiated itself from the more moderate socialistic currents, and it was so much the easier for it to keep the whole movement in hand. Without knowing it, the official Socialist leaders of the Soviet, who had won their popularity as Duma delegates, Kerensky, Tchkeidse, Skobelev, etc., submitted themselves to the guidance of more obscure people, who were hurriedly coming back to Petrograd from their Siberian exile, from Paris, Geneva, London, and New York, and who were far better informed regarding the tactics of an Internationalist Revolution.

Already before their arrival the first decisive steps had been taken in the name of the Soviet against military discipline and against the further prosecution of war, steps which bear witness to the initial confusion of Extremist and Moderate ideas in the Russian Revolution. I mean the famous "Prikaz (Order) No. 1," of March 17th, and the "Appeal of the Soviet to the Peoples of the Whole World," of March 27, 1917.

"Prikaz No. I" gave a signal by introducing into all army units elected committees of soldiers, abolishing outward marks of respect due to officers, and controlling by the Soviets the possession of arms and all "political manifestations" by the army. The draft of the Order made its appearance, nobody knew where from, on the second day of the Revolution. The Provisional Government rejected its contents and refused to accept it as one of the conditions of its support by the Soviet. On the following morning the Soviet published it in its name, and although the publication had no legal

character, in spite of the opposition of the military commanders, its dispositions were enacted first in Petrograd, then in Moscow, and finally at the Front, in the ranks of the fighting army. A special committee, presided over by General Polivanov, the former War Minister, expanded it into what was called "The Soldiers' Charter," and although the War Minister of the Revolution, Mr. Guchkov, would not sign it and resigned, "The Soldiers' Charter" was signed by his successor in office, Mr. Kerensky, in May. It thus became "the last nail in the coffin of the army," according to General Alexiev, the then Commander-in-Chief's telling expression.

"Prikaz No. 1," a representative of the Soviet, Joseph Goldenberg, explained to M. Claude Anet in July, "was not a mistake, but a necessity. The day we made the Revolution, we understood that the army would crush it if it was not destroyed itself. We had to choose between the army and the Revolution, and we did not hesitate."

This is a crude, but true statement. In a sense Mr. Goldenberg was right. The army, if left to itself, would stifle the kind of Extremist Revolution he had in view, while for the first two months it was sure to protect the National Revolution headed by the First Provisional Government. Evidently Mr. Goldenberg's friends knew very well what they were driving at. The Moderate Socialists did not yet realize it, but they followed the lead of the Extremists.

Mr. Goldenberg's reasoning was also extended to the problem of war and peace in general. "If the Revolution does not kill the war, the war will kill the Revolution"; so ran the current formula, not as yet adorned with arguments borrowed from the Zimmerwald ideology. To stop the war on the front from the inside a new and more systematic propaganda was started in the trenches, in addition to that from Berlin, as soon as the opposition on the part of commanding officers to the free admission of agitators and periodicals from Petrograd was disposed of. The increasing influence of Extremist newspapers in the trenches will be seen from the following figures of copies, sent from Moscow only:

Then means had to be provided for stopping the war from the outside. Within a fortnight from the beginning of the Revolution the attention of the Soviet was drawn from military questions to those of foreign politics and diplomacy. A special Committee for Foreign Affairs was started within the Soviet, and it was allowed to have free telegraphic communications and its own service of diplomatic couriers with Stockholm. The whole machinery of extreme internationalist propaganda as herein described was now at the disposal of the Soviets—or rather had secured a chance of profiting by the Soviet inexperience, in order to make a tool of it. However, at the beginning, the Soviet leaders had the illusion of leading, and they were very proud to start on a new world mission for a "democratic peace and the fraternity of nations."

In their appeal of March 27th they proclaimed a new era of a "decisive struggle with the predatory

tendencies of the Governments of all countries." "Conscious of her revolutionary strength, Russian Democracy (the Soviet leaders were careful to speak, not in the name of "Socialism," but in the name of "Democracy") declares that it will in every way counteract the predatory politics of its own ruling classes, and it invites all the peoples of Europe to collective and decisive action for the benefit of peace." "Workmen of all countries, we fraternally tender our hands to you over the mountains of fraternal corpses . . . and we entreat you to restore and to corroborate international unity. . . ."

steeped in their "old regime" tradition, would be easily made to understand the necessity of concessions to the coming "Democracy" in order to take the wind out of the Extremists' sails.

language, that they were not satisfied with the result of their protracted negotiations. Without even waiting for that, the Soviet Committee for its part published a statement to the effect that their pourparlers with the National Socialist Ministers did not in the least prejudice their general standpoint, which was against any compromise with the Governments, and was entirely for changing the war with the enemy into a class war with capitalism.

only weaken their hold upon the working masses without giving more power either to themselves or to the Cabinet. "Why do you want us to enter the Cabinet?" Mr. Tsereteli said to the partisans of the idea of a "Coalition" Ministry. "We shall only impede your action while dictating to you uncompromising decisions in the form of 'ultimatums,' and in case you do not consent to them, we shall be obliged to leave the Ministry, thus rousing comment."

The only alternative was for themselves to share in a policy of compromise—but this seemed impossible to a Russian Socialist. However, French and British Socialists had come from countries where compromise was—for the last three years particularly—the rule of socialistic activity. They measured Russia by their own political standard, and as they came to Russia at the moment when they were obliged to compromise with their minorities, led by Longuet and Henderson, why not arrange for a compromise with Tsereteli and Tchkeidse, the Georgian Socialists who had become Russian leaders? Their mistaken idea was that by arranging for a "Coalition" they would strengthen the Government, and that by yielding to the Soviet's Pacifism they would strengthen the enthusiasm of the army. It was M. Albert Thomas, in particular, who dealt the final blow to the First Provisional Government, while energetically working to bring about the first Coalition

The only Socialist in the First Government, Mr. Kerensky, who has just declared the former foreign policy of Russia to be only a "personal opinion" of the Foreign Minister, was about to go to the War Office on the condition that he should try to overcome

with his personal influence the growing demoralization of the army and to force it, by the power of his oratory, to an offensive movement. The kind of official optimism which was then predominant, along with growing uneasiness, among the Allied Socialist Ministers, is characterized in M. Vandervelde's book on Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution.

Even people like M. Claude Anet were singing the praises of Mr. Kerensky's "juvenile courage." In Russia people knew Mr. Kerensky's deficiencies, but Mr. Kerensky had now become the national hero, and one began to hope against hope that everything would be all right. Only specialists knew that under the state of mind then existent in the army no offensive was possible, that any offensive movement was bound to rouse opposition among the soldiers and would end in a disaster. It is enough to say that women's "shock battalions" were to be formed as one of the measures to inspire self-confidence and courage in the regular troops, in order to understand just how desperate the situation was already.

Personally, as Foreign Minister in the First Provisional Government, I was unable to agree to the so-called policy of "peace without annexations and contributions, on the self-determination principle," because I knew there was German intrigue and the spirit of Zimmerwald behind it. I knew it was the first step to a separate peace, because no general peace on that basis was possible, and no war was possible in Russia after the promulgation of a formula which would be understood by the soldiers as a promise of immediate peace. Neither could I accept the idea of a Coalition with Moderate

^<sup>1 London: George Allen & Unwin, Ltd

The result is known to everybody. In two months there came the collapse of the Russian offensive, in half a year the complete victory of the internationalist current in the Revolution, and in nine months Brest-Litovsk. As a consequence of the demoralization of the army and of its retreat, hundreds of thousands of deserters flooded the country, which they found deprived of all its former administrative authorities. They brought trouble and disorders to towns and villages, and they entirely blocked all means of communication. It was under their influence that the peasants, who until then

had kept comparatively quiet, started the distribution of land the burning of landowners' houses, and the "creating of the new Law," as was the current expression of the Socialist Revolutionaries, the predominating agrarian party. The cities had already, by that time, become isolated from the villages. All commerce was stopped, factories were closed. No manufactured goods were sent to villages. No grain was sold in exchange to the cities, unemployment speedily grew, the first symptoms of famine and disease already made their appearance. Bolshevism was promising peace, food, land, and workmen's control of the factories. Russia was ripe for Bolshevism.

The story of its increasing success was only recently told by one of its leaders, Mr. Trotsky. Of course, Mr. Trotsky tells it from his own point of view, and he states the facts in terms of his own ideology, while very often distorting them or in ignorance of their full meaning. But substantially he is right in his explanations of the loss of popularity by the Moderate Socialist leaders of the Soviet, as also in his statements regarding the growing Bolshevist success among the Petrograd workmen and soldiers. Mr. Tsereteli was also right in his forebodings as to the result of his and his friends taking part in the Government. The opinion of the man in the street, a workman or a soldier of Petrograd, was, in April, as M. Anet states it in his diary under the dates April 13–26th, that war must be stopped at once, and the only obstacle was that "Germany would not make peace with Guchkov and Miliukov: accordingly they must go. As soon as a

History of the Russian Revolution to Brest Litovsk (George Allen & Unwin, Ltd.),

true Democracy assumes power, the German Socialists will overthrow William and will unite with us."

were the only people who knew what they wished to do, and who were ready to use force in order to achieve their aims. On the day after his arrival in Russia, on April 17th, Mr. Lenin made public his "personal" points, which started with the assertion that "no concessions, not even the smallest ones, to revolutionary defencism (i.e. the point of view of national defence) are possible, because war remains predatory and imperialistic, owing to the capitalistic character of this Government."

Moderate Socialists are "cheated by the bourgeoisie," and they are to be taught that "no truly democratic peace, no peace without violence is possible without the overthrow of capitalism." "This view must be largely propagated in the army," which must be taught to "fraternize." The first stage of the Revolution which is characterized by the bourgeois possession of power owing to the lack of consciousness and organization of the proletariat must yield to the second stage, which must give power to the proletarians and poorest peasants. "The first step towards it is to protest against the parliamentary republic, and to insist on the handing over the power to the Soviets. Police, army, and officials are to be abolished, proprietors' estates confiscated, all land and all banks are to be "nationalized."

It will not be, as yet, equivalent to "introducing Socialism," but it will make an immediate transition to control by the Soviet, to collective production and the distribution of produce. "The initiative must be taken for organizing a new International against Social Chauvinists and against the Centre." It is explained that International Socialists give that name

of the Centre to "the current that vacillates between Chauvinism ("Defencism") and Internationalism, e.g. Kautsky and Co., in Germany; Longuet and Co., in France; Tchkeidse and Co., in Russia; Turati and Co., in Italy; Ramsay Macdonald and Co., in England, etc."

Pure Zimmerwaldism was to be opposed to "unprincipled nebulousness and political servility" of Zimmerwaldian renegades—the "lower middle-class Democrats," as Mr. Trotsky misleadingly calls the Moderate Socialists. And pure Zimmerwaldism has won the game. It is impossible to state here in detail just how it happened, but Mr. Trotsky has told his version of the story, and I told mine in another place. The reader may be referred to both. The point is the same in both readings, namely, that International Socialism has gained the upper hand over the National Revolution. Whatever be the result of this change for Russia, in Europe it is a most important episode and a link in the chain in the history of rising Internationalism.

4. Influence of the Russian Revolution on European Internationalism.

We have now seen the kind of influence that European Internationalism has had upon the course of the Russian Revolution. Let us trace the inverse influence which the internationalized Russian Revolution has had upon European Internationalism.

Had M. Albert Thomas's exertions been successful,

r See my History of the Second Russian Revolution, now in process of publication in Russia.

and had Mr. Kerensky's speeches been able to regenerate the "democratized" Russian Army, the flexible socialistic majorities in the Entente countries might have been stiffened. The inevitable failure of the Russian offensive was bound, on the contrary, to make their immediate position untenable and to strengthen both extremes at their expense: the "bourgeois militarism" and the Extremist Internationalism. After all, the vicissitudes and the final issue of the war, not parliamentary discussions and the resolutions of congresses, decided the fate of all three currents. Whether it was to be the peace "without victory" of President Wilson of 1916, or a "peace of understanding" (Verständigungsfrieden) of the German Reichstag of July 1917, or a "peace of violence," in case of the complete defeat of either one side, had to be determined on the battlefield.

The Russian Revolution was also considered as a new factor, but not so much owing to the exalted mission assumed by its socialist leaders, as because of the changes likely to result from the state of mind of the Russian fighting forces. The chances of a "democratic peace" as proposed by the Soviet being enforced were rising and falling in exact proportion with the number of enemy troops which the Russian front was able to detain.

We can easily trace the seemingly complicated story of these fluctuations to the above mentioned cause, when studying the rise and fall of a new international enterprise started under the auspices of the Russian Revolution. I mean the renewed attempt to convoke a Conference of Socialists of all countries in Stockholm. The two first stages of this story follow the beaten track. Suggested by Germans, the idea was taken up by pro-

German neutrals. It is the third stage that is new: that where the customary participation of neutrals is intercepted by that unforeseen agent—the indiscriminating Zimmerwaldians of the Russian Soviet. It is here that fluctuations begin.

To start at the beginning. The Soviet's Appeal of March 27th "to the peoples of the whole world" set Internationalist Socialists of all countries to work. It directly invited Germany to take up the Zimmerwald and Kienthal scheme. Lenin himself might be entirely satisfied with the Soviet's proposal to Germany to imitate the Russian example and "to overthrow the yoke of the autocratic regime, to desist from serving an instrument of rapine and violence for kings, landowners, and bankers, and with united effort to stop the fearful slaughter dishonouring humanity and obfuscating the great days of Russia's era of freedom."

This invitation elicited only a very reserved and dry response on the part of the German Social Democrats. They were against interference in any one's internal affairs; so far as Germany was concerned, the great majority of Germans were Monarchists, and they would be quite satisfied with democratic reform, without asking for a Republic. Of course, the German Minority, which had just, under the influence of the Russian Revolution, separated itself from the old party, and had at the Congress of Gotha (April 6–8th) assumed a new organization and the new name of the "Independent S.D. Party," did not agree to that view.

During the debate following Bethmann-Hollweg's resignation (July 14th) the Independent Socialists proposed an amendment including the "pure" Russian formula for "democratic peace," and they wound up

by a demand for "democratization which will culminate in the creation of a Socialist Republic."

Such an appeal, of course, did not go unheeded by the Soviet Zimmerwaldians. They looked askance at National Socialist Deputies and Ministers coming to Russia. How could they allow them to appropriate for themselves the initiative of a Conference towards which their own attitude was, as M. Vandervelde very well stated, that of "a kind of Messianic faith?" "They believe," M. Vandervelde goes on saying, "that the prestige of their Revolution would put them in a position to impose their peace formula on the other Socialist parties, including the German Majority Socialists."

embodied, without any compromise or misguiding comment.

After having told the story of their having "forced" the Government to accept the "democratic" formula of peace, they gave motives for their decisions of May 9-15th to take the initiative in convoking the International Conference at Stockholm:

The Soviet of Working Men and Soldiers thinks that the cessation of war and the establishment of international peace . . . can only be attained by a united international effort of workmen's parties and syndicates of belligerent and neutral countries for an energetic and tenacious struggle against universal slaughter. The first necessary and decisive step in order to organize such an international movement is the convocation of an International Conference. Its principal task must be to bring about an agreement between the representatives of the Socialist proletariat on the subject of liquidating the policy of the sacred union with the Governments and with imperialist classes which precludes all struggle for peace, and also on the subject of the methods of such a struggle. . . Are invited parties and organizations of working classes which share in these opinions and are ready to unite their efforts for the sake of their realization.

The Soviet is also firmly persuaded that parties and organizations which do accept this invitation will also accept the inflexible obligation to apply in reality all decisions of that Conference.

It is now easy to understand why the Soviet particularly emphasized the necessity for all socialistic minorities to be present at Stockholm. They were the only parties capable of sharing in the programme, tactics, and the discipline of Zimmerwald-Kienthal. On May 9th the Executive Committee of the Soviet sent special telegrams to England, France, Italy, Switzerland, and Sweden in order to "invite comrades Brizon, Longuet, and other representatives of the French Socialistic Opposition, representatives of the Inde-

pendent Labour Party, the British Socialist party, and the Italian Social Democratic party to send their delegates to Petrograd."

This was not very much different from Robert Grimm's invitation to Stockholm, extended in the name of the Berne I.S.C. to "parties and organizations sharing the watchwords: war against the conciliation of parties, renewal of the class war, demand for an immediate armistice, and the conclusion of peace without contributions and annexations on the basis of free self-determination of peoples."

This "third Zimmerwald Conference" was to meet on May 18th, ten days before the date initially fixed by the "Dutch-Scandinavian Committee" for a general Socialistic Conference, in order "to work out a uniform platform" and to control the latter (cf. supra, p. 57). It is worth while enumerating the socialistic organizations which received Robert Grimm's invitation: the list will show at once the sphere of the influence of Zimmerwald-Kienthal doctrine and tactics. They are:

The Soviet of Working Men and Soldiers.

The Central Committee and the Organization Committee of The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party.

The Central Committee of Russian Social Revolutionary Party of an Internationalist Tendency.

The Central Committee of Jewish Labour "Bunds" in Poland, Lithuania and Prussia.

The German Independent Social Democratic Labour Party.

The French Social Democratic Minority of Zimmerwald Fendency.

The Italian Social Democratic Party.

The Polish Socialistic Party.

The Bulgarian Social Democratic Party (the "Left" one).

Rumanian Social Democratic Party.

British Independent Labour Party.

Swedish, Danish and Norwegian Social Democratic Unions of Young Men.

Norwegian Social Democratic Party. Serbian Social Democratic Party.

Attempts of the Entente Socialists to change that state of mind of the Soviet were quite hopeless. The Belgians decidedly refused to confer with the Germans. The French Deputies (Moutet, Cachin, Lafont) were so strongly impressed by the Soviet's extremism that on their return to France they advocated a policy of the largest concessions.

powerlessness was withdrawn, and was replaced by one accepting "the initiative of the Russian comrades," and consenting to send a delegation to Stockholm in order "to prepare for peace according to the principles formulated by the Revolutionary Government and by the Socialists in Russia."

as we have seen, were making of it a leading feature and an unalterable condition of the renascence of the International.

Whether or not Russian Zimmerwaldism would succeed in wringing involuntary concessions from the socialistic majorities of the Allied countries, entirely depended on the success or failure of that enterprise which forced Allied Socialists to coax the Russian tovarischi (comrades) of the Soviet—the Russian offensive.

In the third week of July news came to hand reporting that after the first brilliant successes of the Russian offensive, exclusively due to newly-organized "shock battalions" and to the personal gallantry of the officers, the body of the army, without being defeated in battle, turned their backs to the enemy. Before the end of July it became clear that the retreat was not accidental, and that it was not to be stopped by Mr. Kerensky's means of persuasion.

On July 29th General Denikin told it to the Revolutionary War Minister in the same plain and outspoken manner as he was wont to use when addressing the authorities of the ancient regime. He quoted a number of instances in order to show just how inadequate and transient the impression of Mr. Kerensky's speeches was on the army, and, on the other hand, how thoroughly destructive was the process of the so-called "democratization" of the army for preserving its discipline and its loyalty to the commanding staff. Among other things General Denikin quoted a report of the Commander of the 1st Corps of the Siberian Army, which I reproduce here in order to show how utterly unjust and misleading it is to explain the Russian defeat

by anything else than the state of mind of soldiers depraved by an extremist propaganda:

On the receipt of news of the Russian military collapse, readiness to defer to the wishes of the Soviet at once disappeared. "Let us not shut our eyes to reality," one of the Russian delegates, Mr. Rubanovitch,

said to the Executive Committee of Peasants' Deputies on September 9th. "If the appeal to Revolutionary Democracy on behalf of peace is to be heeded, the fighting force of the Russian Revolutionary Army must be reconstituted. Failing this, there is no salvation, and no struggle for peace is possible."

Indeed, all leading Socialists who committed themselves to the Soviet proposal now hastily withdrew their consent, on the plausible pretext that the Russian Government themselves no longer insisted on backing the Stockholm Conference. Arthur Henderson, who still favoured it, at the end of July had to resign his place in the Cabinet (July 29th); a month later (August 22nd) he was disavowed by the Trade Union Congress in Blackpool, which, by an overwhelming majority of 2,049,000 against 91,000, carried a resolution to the effect that, "At present a Conference in Stockholm has no chance of success."

Albert Thomas proved more flexible and farseeing. Already on August 2nd, in his speech delivered at Champial, he declared that the Conference was "untimely," and that the chief reason for consenting to it—namely, "the feeling of admiration for the Russian Revolution, and the desire to help it in an active way"—no longer existed, because "the effort we were willing to make is not considered desirable by the Russian Government."

As a consequence of that change, differences of opinion among Moderate Socialists on the subject of Stockholm so much increased, that the preliminary inter-Allied Conference in London (August 29th to September 2nd) proved unable to come to unanimous conclusions. The declaration of the majority, in slightly

veiled expressions, acknowledged the failure of the Russian Revolution "to rouse popular energy against the militarism of the Central Empires," and formally limited the meaning of all three principles of the Russian "democratic" formula: "without contributions," "without annexations," and "self-determination."

Even Mr. Henderson had now to declare that, owing to "the inability of the inter-Allied Conference to come to any even approximate agreement," the International Conference "would be not merely harmful, but disastrous." "We cannot meet in an International Conference so long as no common ground of understanding between the working classes of the Allied nations has been discovered."

The only "common ground" was, indeed, that of Zimmerwald-Kienthal; and as soon as it appeared useless to seek for it any longer, even such hypocritical and half-hearted concessions as had been made to the Russian Revolution were withdrawn. Even the "optimist," M. Vandervelde, discussing the new situation a little later, made some melancholy remarks which may serve for drawing the veil over the past.

"Riga is taken; Courland is conquered; the lines in the north are broken, and, which is infinitely more grave than the worst defeats, the question is being asked if the Revolutionary armies are still capable, not of a great offensive, but simply of holding out against the attacks of the enemy. Meanwhile, in the interior the authority of the Provisional Government is tottering. The Soviets are discussing when they should be acting, party and class antagonisms are dominating the preoccupations of public safety, and

in this immense country, where so many nationalities meet, one looks in vain for any sign of a national spirit. We must expect in these conditions that in Paris, as in London, the Conservatives, who have been forced to keep silence during the first successes of the Revolution, will to-day open their mouths to judge and to condemn."

M. Vandervelde was perfectly right in his forebodings, with the exception that, perhaps, he, too, might open his mouth in order "to judge and to condemn" the kind of help given by his colleagues to bring about that lamentable result. In London, in Paris—and in Berlin, too—the greater part of public opinion, Parliaments, and Government resumed an uncompromising attitude: the period of concessions to Internationalism had passed with the passing success of the Russian Revolution.

In Berlin the parliamentary bloc which carried the Reichstag resolution of July 19th (on "a peace of understanding," with which "forced acquisitions of territory are inconsistent") was dissolved in October: the "Independents" were isolated, and while they were carrying on a criminal propaganda in the Navy, the old party declared itself at the Würzburg Congress (October 14th-20th) ready to change their irresponsible attitude towards the State. The new Chancellor Michaelis, whose nomination was intended to conciliate the parliamentary bloc without making them any substantial concessions, told the Budget Committee of the Reichstag that the Government reserved for themselves full liberty of action so far as war aims were concerned, and the Foreign Minister, Kühlmann, finally declared (October 9th) that Germany will never yield on the Alsace-Lorraine question.

The newly-built Jingo "party of the Fatherland" had won the ascendancy, and, as a result, Michaelis had to go (October 28th), his place being taken by a still more conservative politician, Count Hertling, nominated by the Emperor without previously consulting the Reichstag, as had been the case with Michaelis.

from voting, but they were few (85). Mr. Alexander Varenne was right when he summed up the final result as extremely favourable, "the majority for sharing in the Government having reached two-thirds, and the majority for voting credits four-sixths."

That is why the Government felt strengthened and unswervingly repudiated internationalist views on "secret diplomacy" and on "war aims." Ribot and Painlevé could answer Kühlmann's "Never": "We shall have both victory and Alsace-Lorraine." To be sure, the composition of the Government, owing to the combined attacks from both extreme wings, Royalist and Socialist, had been twice modified. After Painlevé (August 30th), Clemenceau took up the presidency (November 13th). But the spirit of national resistance was only strengthened by the change. "I shall make no promises, I shall make war," M. Clemenceau was heard saying in his declaration.

Interrupted by a Deputy, "What about your war aims?" M. Clemenceau gave a plain answer: "My aim is victory! We will try to be a Government. I share many of your (Extreme Left) prejudices, but I differentiate from you when you wish to introduce perspectives of pure reasoning into the world of reality." And he proudly concluded: "If we see the dawn of the day when we can hail victory, I wish you on that day to inflict the vote of censure on me. I will then retire satisfied." M. Clemenceau has lived up to the day he so confidently predicted.

Internationalism was on the wane all over Europe just at the moment when it carried its decisive victory in Petrograd. It seemed as if the advent of Bolshevism in Russia was to mark the end of Bolshevism as an international peril. Far from that being the case, the danger was only beginning to develop.

5. THE BOLSHEVIST COLLAPSE IN WAR AND TRIUMPH IN PROPAGANDA.

Not only in order to be fair to the Bolshevist leaders, but simply to understand them, one must not judge them by the immediate results of their "direct action" Did not Lenin himself say (supra, pp. 20 and 65) that one must be naïve and ignorant to think that a backward country like Russia is capable of becoming a Socialistic Community over night? And did not the Bolsheviks always protest against the supposition that, while destroying the Russian Army and putting their country at the mercy of Germany, they really expected the German "imperialists" to favour Russia with a "democratic peace."

A few days after the Bolshevist trial revolt in July, Mr. Lenin repeated what he said twelve years earlier, namely, that Russia was not ripe for an immediate socialistic overthrow. And Mr. Trotsky, in his published account on his part in the Brest-Litovsk negotiations, says, of course, a little post factum: "When the will of history summoned revolutionary Russia to initiate peace negotiations, we had no doubt whatever that, failing the intervention of the decisive power of the world's revolutionary proletariat, we should have to pay in full for over three and a half years of war. We knew perfectly well that German Imperialism was an enemy imbued with the consciousness of its own colossal strength, as manifested so glaringly in the present war."

No, the Bolshevik leaders were neither "naïve" nor "ignorant." They "perfectly well knew" what the immediate result of their tactics was bound to be. If, in full consciousness of their ominous conduct, they were determined to disregard this result, it was because of the final aim they pursued, which is known to us as the aim and the tactics of Revolutionary Syndicalism. According to those tactics "direct action" was the aim in itself, quite independently from its practical results, owing to its intrinsic educational value. Was not the Revolution, in the view of the Syndicalists, the work of "every day and every hour?"

The result will come sooner or later: that was the firm belief of that revolutionary doctrine, but the only means to hasten its advent was to go on fighting for it. Mr. Lenin states it in utterances which might be signed by Georges Sorel. "If Socialism," he says to the Congress of the Peasants a fortnight after his triumph in Petrograd (November 1917), "can only be enacted when the intellectual development of all will permit it, we shall not see the advent of Socialism even after 500 years. But more advanced elements—such as the Bolshevist Party in the present case—must carry with them the masses without letting themselves be stopped by the fact that the average mentality of the masses is not what it ought to be. We must lead the masses by using the Soviets as organs of popular initiative."

Mr. Trotsky repeats the same refrain in his book. "One must always remember that the masses of the people have never been in possession of power, that they have always been under the heel of other classes, and that therefore they lack political self-confidence

Any hesitation shown in revolutionary centres has an immediate deteriorating effect upon them. Only when the revolutionary party firmly and unflinchingly speeds to its goal can it help the working masses to overcome all the slavish instincts inherited from centuries, and lead the masses to victory. Only a resolute offensive secures victory with a minimum expenditure of strength and with the fewest losses."

Moreover, "France and England will be obliged to join in peace negotiations. If they do not join, then their peoples, after having been informed of the trend of the negotiations, will drive them there with lashes, and the Russian representative will make their accusations at the bar of justice" (November 21st).

A few days later Mr. Trotsky is a little aston-

ished. The Germans, past masters in bluff, easily outran their inexperienced pupils. "It must be candidly admitted," Mr. Trotsky states, "that we did not anticipate that the actual proposals of the German Imperialists would be separated by such a wide gulf from the formulæ presented to us by Kühlmann on December 25th as a sort of plagiarism of the Russian Revolution (no annexations, etc.). We, indeed, did not expect such an acme of impudence." But, of course, General Hoffmann was no match for Leo Trotsky.

What is the use of proposing "predatory conditions of peace" on the part of the Germans? what is the reason for fear on the part of the Bolsheviks? Anyhow, these are "no negotiations. We shall have to carry on other negotiations with Germany, when Liebknecht is at the head of the revolutionary proletariat of Germany, and together with him we shall readjust the map of Europe."

To attain that aim one single thing is necessary: time to edify the European masses. Propaganda is the chief point, and the very negotiations present an interest for the Bolsheviks only so far as they give opportunities for propaganda and protract the conclusion of peace. "We do not take into consideration that it is peace negotiations we carry on with Germany. We speak to them our customary revolutionary language." "Other negotiations, a true diplomacy of the trenches" will be carried in the ranks of the Austro-German Army through a special newspaper, the Torch, published in German. "We declared that on this point we shall not enter into discussion with German generals, but we will only talk with the German people."

It is true that already in October the German

"Independents" wished their Russian comrades to know that "we cannot expect a Revolutionary movement in Germany to come soon: our Russian comrades must not count upon it." But the Russian comrades were bound to count upon it, because otherwise their game of hazard was lost. Even if they were wrong, and failed, it would not matter. Anyhow, it would be a new and better record for the future. They were really lost only in one case: if they became untrue to their final aim.

"We made it the aim and purpose of our diplomacy," Mr. Trotsky says in his book, not to win a good peace for Russia—which was impossible—but to "enlighten the popular masses, to open their eyes as to the nature of the policy of their respective Governments, and to fuse them in one common struggle against, and hatred of, the bourgeois-capitalist regime." "In so far as we could not pledge ourselves to change the balance and correlation of the world's powers in a very short period of time, we openly and honestly declared that the Revolutionary Government might, under certain circumstances, be compelled to accept an annexationist peace. For not the acceptance of a peace forced upon us by the course of events, but an attempt to hide its predatory character from our own people, would have been the beginning of the end of the Revolutionary Government"

It was, as one may see, quite an easy game: one had only to oppose to every step of German diplomacy a renewed appeal to the "peoples," without heeding any practical consequences. Even if Germany had to win, to dismember Russia, to defeat her Allies, to establish its domination over Europe, what did it

matter? The "common struggle against, and hatred of, the bourgeois-capitalist regime" was bound to come anyhow. Measured by that supreme criterion, everything else dwindled down to insignificance, and it was quite immaterial whether that final result was attained by victory or by temporary compromise, by promises given and not fulfilled, by any kind of "predatory peace" extorted by the "capitalists" and forcibly acceded to by the Internationalists. Anything that might hasten the final upshot was to be resorted to, while no promise and no obligation could be considered binding towards "sworn enemies of the 'proletariat'"

Of course, it is not only the Messianic idea of a Communist millennium to come that makes the Bolsheviks believe in the infallibility of their tactics. It is also their reading of current events, in which they display extreme credulity in regard to the signs of approaching catastrophe. It was not mere bluff when the Pravda stated on November 13, 1917: "William knows that in case he gives an unsatisfactory answer German proletarians and peasants will reply by an outburst of indignation, a cry of revolt which will prove fatal to him." This also was the state of mind of Trotsky during the Brest-Litovsk negotiations. "In the interval, which lasted ten days," he says in his book, "serious disturbances broke out in Austria, and strikes took place among the labouring class there." This he describes as "the first act of recognition on the part of proletariat of the Central Powers of our methods of conducting the peace negotiations, in the face of the annexationist demands of German Imperialism." Later on, the official Isvestia will agree, to be sure:

"we were deceived by the Austro-German strike, which made us—to use Herzen's expression—mistake the second month of pregnancy for the ninth." But directly they console themselves with a new manifestation of their self-conceit. "In our turn we repaid the German Imperialists a hundredfold when we induced them fatally to believe that on the fields of Champagne they might look forward to as speedy successes as they reaped on the snowy plains of Russia." The Bolsheviks thus even construe the military successes of the Allies as one more proof of the intrinsic merits of their internationalist method of fighting with words!

was treating. "It looks as if the Russians do not mean it seriously and are not sincere in their desire to conclude peace. . . ."

But, according to a new version of Bolshevist

optimism, "capitalists" were themselves doing Bolshevist business. Three weeks after the signing of the Brest-Litovsk peace, and a week after its ratification by the All-Russian Soviet, the Petrograd correspondent of the Daily News formulated Mr. Lenin's theory as follows (March 22, 1918): "The task of the Soviets is to hold on until the mutual exhaustion of the fighting groups of European capital brings about revolution in all countries." Meantime, Mr. Trotsky, who exchanged the Foreign Office for the War Office, would prepare his voluntary and democratic "Red Army" in order to impose his Communist law on a revolutionized world.

The events which followed Brest-Litovsk did not seem to justify these sanguine forecasts. The German armies flooded the South Russian plain. Count Mirbach played the master in Moscow and treated the Bolshevik authorities in a high-handed way. Puffed up with their victory in the East, the German armies were preparing for a final blow in the West. In Germany itself and in the Reichstag there was no more talk of "peace by negotiation." The peace that was to follow the successful offensive of April and May had to be a "German peace." The democratic formula of the parliamentary bloc of July 19th was no more spoken about, or it was even openly repudiated. The Allied countries—France particularly—lived through what was called their "darkest hour." If the spirit was un daunted, human material was becoming exhausted while the Americans were only just beginning to cross and their military value was as yet unknown. The hour seemed to have struck for the German victory on the continent. Was it within the limits of human

foresight to surmise that before a half-year elapsed all that glory would pass away like a summer dream?

During the summer months of 1918 Germany more than once acknowledged the success of that propaganda by repeatedly protesting against it. On May 10th Count Mirbach addressed his ultimatum to the Soviet Government, enjoining them to stop their revolutionary propaganda amongst the war prisoners. On June 6th Kühlmann sent a note to the Soviet demanding the immediate dissolution of committees for war prisoners and the arrest of their presidents. Austria, also, insisted that revolutionary propaganda among the Austro-Hungarian prisoners should be discontinued. A week later the Viennese Press deplored the Bolshevist epidemics let loose in Austria by prisoners back from Russia.

will put yourself at the head of German workmen, soldiers, and peasants, and after having helped them to the victory over their own bourgeoisie, you will, shoulder to shoulder with the Russian proletariat, advance on the last and decisive struggle with the expiring world's imperialism, and build on its ruins the world's social Republic of the Soviets." Trotsky, in his turn, at a popular meeting in Petrograd on October 19th, ventures to "prophesy": "Let only the ring of German militarism be disjointed, and a revolution will be kindled in France. The barricades in Berlin will the very next day bring forth barricades in Paris. In full confidence we now say to Poincaré, Clemenceau, and to the bigot Wilson: 'You will not frighten us; you will have your revolution, and we must only wait and keep in being.'"

Of course, the Bolsheviks were very far from adopting "wait and see" tactics. They proved extremely active in coming into contact with kindred Extremist Internationalist elements all over the world, sending them money, leaflets, and instructions through the agents of their foreign propaganda. After the Armistice, in a still larger degree than during the war, they considered written and oral propaganda to be their chief aim and weapon. And they made everything else subservient to it. They expected the opposite side, the bourgeoisie and the Governments, to be as keen and to become as active in defending their interests as they themselves were. That is why Lenin declared that, in spite of the proximity of the World Revolution, "the situation was never so dangerous for Bolshevism as it has become now." After the Armistice they expected the Allies to pass through the Straits to

Southern Russia, and they, in Trotsky's speech on October 12th, beforehand declared that the Southern Front, and particularly the Don region, will now "become the wedge of the World Revolution." Events have since proved that they strongly overrated the cleverness and the capability of the Allies for large scale initiative. The new "Holy Alliance" of the bourgeois Governments was late in coming. Moderate Socialism and Labour opinion strongly favoured the Russian Soviet experiment. And instead of an Allied armed force, there finally came to Moscow from the Paris Peace Conference, the "Prinkipo" proposal of January 22, 1919. The "bigot" Wilson, far from taking up the part assigned to him by the Bolsheviks, namely, that of "the leader of the common bourgeois front" as opposed to "Lenin's front of the World Revolution," has shown an unmistakable leaning towards recognizing the Bolshevik Government as representing the real will of the Russian people.

After the first moments of astonishment and incredulity, the Bolsheviks at once saw their chance and tried to use it. They never refused a proposal to come and to discuss matters—not even at Brest-Litovsk. Discussion meant propaganda. We have an interesting account of an extraordinary meeting of a Bolshevist War Council at the Kremlin, in Moscow, upon the reception of the Entente invitation. The story is told by a Bolshevik official, who enjoyed Lenin's confidence, but who served the Bolsheviks against his will and convictions. All the leading Bolsheviks

^<sup>1 See Daily Chronicle of March 6th, a telegram from Geneva, reproducing a correspondence from Kiel, whither the said official flew from Moscow.

capitalists "—in such regions of Russia as were not possessed by the Bolsheviks, such as the Urals or Siberia.

matically disjoining their followers"; (3) in the third place, the "left revolutionary wing." The invitation to take part in the Congress was addressed to this last category: to Revolutionary "Socialists and Communists of Zimmerwald and Kienthal colouring." It is important to point out just which were the parties invited from different countries and classified with the Bolsheviks. Here is the list in full, as it is given in the telegram:

• 1. The "Spartacus" League (Germany).
• 2. The Bolsheviks, or the Communist party (Russia). The Communist parties of—
     • 3. German Austria.
     • 4. Hungary.
     • 5. Finland
     • 6. Poland.
     • 7. Esthonia
     • 8. Latvia.
     • Lithuania.
     • io. White Russia.
     • 11. Ukrainia.
• 12. The revolutionary elements of the Czechs.
• 13. The Socialist Democratic party of Bulgaria
• 14. The Socialist Democratic party of Rumania.
• 15. The left wing of the Social Democratic party in Serbia.
• 16. The left wing of the Social Democratic party in Sweden.
• 17. The Socialist Democratic party in Norway
• 18. The groups recognizing the principle of class struggle in Denmark.
      • 19. The Communist party in Holland.
• 20. The revolutionary elements of the Workmen's party in Belgium.

• 21 and 22. Groups and organizations belonging to the Socialist and Syndicalist movement in France, which are, in general, united.

• 23. The left wing of the Social Democratic party in Switzer-land.
      • 24. The Socialist party in Italy.
• 25. The elements of the left wing of the Socialist party in Spain.
• 26. The elements of the left wing of the Socialist party in Portugal.
• 27. The British Socialist Party (the elements closest to us are represented by MacLean).
      • 28. I.S.P.K. (England)
      • 29. I.W.W.K. (England)
      • 30. I.W.W. (Great Britain).
• 31. The revolutionary elements of the working organizations in Ireland.
• 32. The revolutionary elements of the Shop Stewards (Great Britain).
      • S.L.P. (America).
• 34. The elements of the left wing of the Socialist party in America (tendencies represented by Debs and by the League of the Socialist propaganda).
      • 35. American W.W. (Workers of the World?)
      • 36. W.W. in Australia.
      • 37. American Workers' International Industrial Union
• 38. The Socialist groups of Tokio and of Samoa, represented by Genkkayma; and
      • The Socialist International youth.

These were the elements likely to represent the "Third International," the "revolutionary," according to Lenin. His views as to the common platform uniting all these groups are also settled. The following is an abstract of principles to be laid down as the basis of the new "organ of combat," which was to be started by the proposed Congress:

• The present period is that of the dissolution and the breakdown of the whole capitalist system of the world.
• 2. The task of the proletariat to-day consists in immediately taking possession of the power of government, in order to substitute for it the apparatus of the proletarian power.
• 3. This new apparatus of government must incorporate the dictatorship of the working class, and in some places also that of petty peasants and agricultural workers, i.e. the weapon of a systematic overthrow of the exploiting classes.
• 4. The dictatorship of the proletariat must pursue the direct expropriation of capitalism and the abolition of private ownership of the means of production, which implies—under the name of Socialism—the suppression of private property and its transfer

to the proletarian State, under the Socialist administration of the working class . . . the abolition of capitalist agricultural production, monopolization of great commercial firms. . . .

In order to secure the Socialist Revolution, the disarmament of the bourgeoisie and of its agents, as well as the general arming

of the proletariat, are necessary.1

We see that Lenin was right while asserting that the only aim of his proposals to the Entente was to secure a longer life for the existence of the Russian Bolshevist experiment, in order that he might prepare the "mortal blow" to its enemy, "capitalism." Before we proceed further, it is important to learn what was, then, the answer of the "central" and the "patriotic" Socialists to that attempt to organize international Zimmerwaldism and to make war on the old organization of the "Second" International.

This answer has been given by the Congress of the Second International, which really took place in Berne on February 3-8, 1919. It is couched in terms of the resolution proposed by Hjalmar Branting, and voted by the great majority of the Conference. Taken as a whole, particularly if one does not know anything about the debates, the resolution sounds very satisfactory. As the text of Branting's resolution is not sufficiently known, I reproduce it here in extenso:

The Conference welcomes the great political revolutions in Russia, in Austria-Hungary, and in Germany, which have broken the old Imperialist and militarist regimes and overthrown their Governments.

The Conference invites the Socialist working masses of

I take the text of the wireless from the Écho de Paris, January 25, 1919.

these countries to develop the Democratic and Republican institutions, within whose framework the work of the Socialist transformation may be accomplished. Pending these decisive hours, when the problem of the Socialist refounding of the world assumes the character of burning actuality which it never has had before, the working masses must unanimously arrive at a clear insight as to the paths which will lead them to their emancipation.

In complete accord with all Congresses of the International, the Berne Conference immovably stands upon the soil of Democracy. A social reorganization, more and more deeply imbued with Socialism, cannot be achieved, and particularly cannot keep firm, if it does not rest upon the conquests of Democracy, and if it does not strike roots in the principles of freedom.

These constituent elements of every Democracy are: liberty of speech and of the Press, the right of union, universal suffrage, a parliamentary system with such institutions as guarantee the co-operation and the expression of the will of the people. The right of coalition, etc., are, at the same time, for the proletariat, the weapon of their class struggle. In relation to certain events which have recently happened, the Conference is anxious to emphasize the constructive character of the Socialist programme. True socialization implies a methodic development of different branches of economic activity under the control of a democratized nation. Arbitrarily to take possession of some concerns by small groups of workmen does not mean introducing Socialism. It is nothing else than capitalism with numerous shareholders.

The idea of the Conference being that no efficient socialistic development is possible except under the law of Democracy, it follows that from the very beginning one must eliminate all methods of socialization which can have no chance of winning the adherence of the majority of the people. The danger would still increase, if such a dictatorship leaned upon only a part of the proletariat. The unavoidable consequence of such a regime would be the paralyzing of all forces of the proletariat by a fratricidal war. The end will be a dictatorship of reaction.

The Russian delegates have proposed to send to Russia a mission composed of representatives of all Socialist currents and nominated by the Conference, in order impartially to report on the economic and political situation in Russia. The Conference is fully conscious of the difficulties inherent in such a task. Nevertheless, considering the general interest which exact knowledge of all facts connected with these movements of popular unrest presents to the Socialist proletariat of all countries, the Conference gives a mandate to the permanent

Commission to organize a delegation charged with this mission to Russia.

The Conference decides to put Bolshevism on the order of the day for the next Congress, and gives a mandate to the Permanent Commission to prepare the question.

But the Conference wants forthwith to draw attention to the fact that famine and distress let loose by the war in all the world, and particularly in vanquished countries, were bound to generate social disorganization. The Governments had better realize their own responsibility in these cases instead of using Bolshevism as a bugbear, and under this name denouncing all risings of proletarians brought to despair. Counter-revolutionary forces are already everywhere at work. The Conference warns those who at this hour hold the fate of the world in their hands against the dangers of a policy of Imperialism as well as that of the military and economic enslavement of peoples. The Conference invites the Socialists of the whole world to close their ranks, in order not to deliver the peoples to international reaction and to do everything for Socialism and Democracy united to triumph everywhere.

All this is excellent. But if one knows the precedents and the consequences of this admirable product of Mr. Branting's statesmanlike wisdom, one cannot help seeing in it the case of—

Video meliora, proboque, Deteriora sequor.

("I see and approve better things: I follow the worse.")

Mr. Branting's resolution was a successful and happy attempt to achieve a compromise on five other resolutions: by Wells (the delegate of the German Majority), Kurt Eisner, Ramsay Macdonald, Renaudel, and Branting himself. The first four contained elements which remind one of Lenin's characteristics of the wavering "Centre." Either they predicted the direct and imminent advent of Socialism, or they engaged the proletariat of the whole world to organize themselves in a "practical" way to start an immediate struggle

were ninety-seven in all) would leave the Conference. Someone else proposed to adjourn the decision. And, indeed, the majority consented not to count the votes given, but to ask the parties present to give their views and their motives for adhering to this or that resolution, Branting's or Adler-Longuet's. The result was nevertheless very instructive. The following section supported Branting:

Germany (Majority and Mi-

France (the former Majorit

nority)

Georgia

German Austria (half of the

Italy (Socialist Reformists)

Delegation Argentina

Palestine Poland Russia

Armenia Bohemia Bulgaria

Russia Sweden

Esthonia

The following supported Adler-Longuet:

France (the new Majority)
German Austria (the other half)

Spain Greece Holland

Now, Lenin was evidently right in stating that the probability of Bolshevism winning its cause before the International Socialist tribunal consisted in the vacillation and uncertainty of the aims and methods of the so-called "Centre." But even such Socialists as Albert Thomas, Renaudel, and other delegates of the former Majority, were wavering. One should read their written declaration on the subject of their participation in the Berne Conference in order to see the contrast between the clearness and con-

This also enormously increases the international danger of Bolshevism. The Bolsheviks were winning not so much by their own strength as by the weakness and inconsistency of their antagonists within the sphere of doctrine shared by both. They were winning in the common audience by simplicity and consistency of action, following upon that doctrine. The Socialist opponents of Bolshevism, instead of repudiating the very doctrine whose inferences clash with reality, preferred to resort to sophistic explanations which are easily used as convincing proofs of

their hypocrisy and selfishness, which are intended to "cheat" the proletariat. Thus real demagogues go for honest men, while sincere Democrats, not without plausible reasons, become suspected of demagogy.

PART III

BOLSHEVISM OUT FOR A WORLD REVOLUTION

on the allegiance of the "conscious minority" of the working class, accompanied by the disarming of the bourgeoisie and the arming of the proletariat, for the parliamentary rule by democratic majorities. I mean also the direct and often personal connection of and intercourse between the organized units of the Bolshevist propaganda in the chief centres of the Old and the New World. No international inquest has been started so far in order to detect all the meshes of that largely ramified network of the "direct action" policy. Such knowledge of it as is possessed by departments of political intelligence in different countries is naturally kept to themselves. But even the piecemeal evidence which has oozed out through the Press, although subject to verification and correction, is already ample enough to permit of important cross-examination and corresponding inferences.

Let us begin with quoting in full an important document published by the Gazette de Hollande at the end of March 1919. It contains detailed instructions to Bolshevist agents abroad, drawn up at a Council held at the Kremlin in November 1918, at which Lenin presided, and Trotsky, Radek, and Chicherin were present. A copy of this document fell into the hands of the Ukrainian General Staff. It is as follows:

REVOLUTIONARY WORK OF THE BOLSHEVIST (COMMUNIST) PARTY.

The work of the Bolshevist organizations in foreign countries is defined as follows:

• I. In the domain of international politics:

  • (a) To support Chauvinist movements and national conflicts.

• (b) To provoke agitation in order to bring about national conflicts.

• (c) To make attempts on the representatives of foreign Powers.

By these means internal disturbances and coups d'état will be brought about, and there will be increased Social Democratic agitation.

2. In the domain of internal politics:

• (a) To compromise by all possible means the influential men in the country, to make attempts on the men in power, and to provoke agitation against the Government.
• (b) To provoke general and partial strikes, to damage machinery and boilers, and to spread propagandist literature.

By these means coups d'état will be facilitated, and it will be possible to seize the supreme power.

3. In the economic domain:

• (a) To provoke and support railway strikes, to blow up bridges and railway lines, and do everything to disorganize transport.
• (b) To impede and prevent the provisioning of the towns with corn, to create financial difficulties and inundate the market with forged banknotes. Special Committees should be formed.

In this way an economic upheaval will bring about the inevitable collapse, and the coup d'état will receive the sympathy of the masses.

4. In the military domain:

• (a) To conduct a vigorous propaganda among the troops. To excite conflicts between officers and men, and to instigate attempts on superior officers.
• (b) To blow up arsenals, bridges, railways, and powder magazines, and to seize consignments of raw materials destined for factories and workshops.

The complete annihilation of the army will be effected, and the soldiers will adopt the Social Democratic labour programme.

5. Investigations and espionage for use in war-time.

(a) Investigations and espionage of a strategic nature: in the army, in the fortresses, in the workshops, exact estimate of armed forces, information as to their moral.

• (b) Investigations and espionage of a tactical nature, at the front and behind the lines.
• (c) Investigations and espionage in naval matters: information regarding location of squadrons, dockyards, naval bases.

One may remark that, although composed a year after the Bolshevist conquest of Russia, these instructions very faithfully represent the German pattern, more suitable for the World War than for the World Revolution. But the programme is obviously revised and enlarged with such details added as were gained as the result of a year's experience of Bolshevist propaganda abroad. It is to be seen that if considered from this point of view nearly all the methods indicated in the instructions find their counterpart in the real propaganda work achieved by the Bolshevist emissaries.

I. THE "FIRST LINK IN THE CHAIN"—GERMANY AND CENTRAL EUROPE.

The "first link in the chain" of the coming World Revolution, according to Lenin's statement, was to be furnished by Germany. It was to be expected that the utmost exertions of the Bolsheviks immediately after their gaining possession of political power, would be directed this way. We have already mentioned their early relations with the German "Spartacists." We saw also that, since M. Joffe settled in Berlin as a "Russian" Ambassador, in May 1918, these relations have become systematic to the great offence of the then official Germany. But while preparing a revolution in Germany M. Joffe had to deal not only with Spartacists,

The Government knew that very well, and towards

the end of October, when everything was ready for a rising, they decided to act. They discovered Bolshevist literature in a diplomatic courier's bag which burst open in the street, and used that proof of M. Joffe's guilt in order to "say him farewell."

Vorwärts itself was finding at that time that "the position of Joffe has become untenable." After his departure from Berlin the Wolf Agency, controlled by the new Socialist Government, published on December 3rd (1918) the following disclosure:

The Bolshevist Embassy at Berlin did not satisfy itself with distributing leaflets for propaganda, but were also buying arms and munitions. In a compartment occupied by the "departed" Embassy a bundle of papers was found containing certain bills bearing dates from September 21st to October 31st, 1918, and referring to 150 Mauser revolvers, 28 Brownings, 23 parabellum, and 27,000 cartridges. Thus once more the declaration of Radek is confirmed, according to which Article 2 of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty did not prevent the Russian Government from making Revolution propaganda.

Far from being offended by this disclosure, Joffe used that opportunity to compliment himself upon his real part in the German Revolution which he vauntingly asserted to have been much greater than is admitted in Wolff's revelations. He answered by a wireless sent to the address of Haase (Frankfürter Zeitung, December 10th) as follows:

It was through the intermediary of the Independent Social Democratic Party that I was able to extend my propaganda by leaflets. As to the purchase of arms, the figures published are not exact. The bills discovered referred only to the arms destined for Russia. The quantity of arms bought and delivered to the Acting People's Commissary, Mr. Barth, is, as you know, far larger. Also the published item of money given does not correspond to reality: it was not 150,000 marks which were handed over to Mr. Barth for the purchase of arms, but many hundreds

of thousands of marks. I am anxious to emphasize these two points; I congratulate myself and I rejoice on having personally, in accord with the Independent Ministers, contributed to the victory of the German Revolution.

A further disclosure by M. Cohn (see The Times, March 7, 1919) may account for the difference between the two statements quoted. I render it in the authentic text of The Times Special Correspondent from the Hague, March 2nd: "Considerable alarm has been excited in German political circles by Thursday's (February 27th) proceedings in the debate on the new Army Bill at Weimar (at the Constituent Assembly), when Herr Noske extracted from the Independent Deputy Cohn the

That part has also been revealed by the Bolsheviks

astounding confession of his financial relations with Joffe when that individual was the Russian Soviet Envoy at Berlin. Herr Cohn said that he acted as a 'legal adviser' to the Soviet Mission at Berlin, and that Joffe, on leaving the German capital on November 5th, transferred to him a 'round million' for continuing payments to 'the 300 officials of the Mission,' together with the control of a balance of 10,500,000 roubles standing to Russian credit at Mendelsohn's Bank in Berlin. The latter sum was ostensibly designed for the support of Russian civilian prisoners in Germany. Herr Cohn, who said he regarded these balances as 'party funds,' openly admitted having applied certain sums out of them to subsidizing two needy party journals."

themselves. The Bolshevist theorician and journalist, M. Bucharin, told us in his organ, Severnaya Communa, how Liebknecht had gone to the Russian Embassy in Berlin for support when the Government first tried to prevent his agitation in the factories, etc. Bucharin says that Liebknecht came to the Embassy in the greatest excitement, asking for advice and support. It was then unanimously decided that Liebknecht should be supported on condition that he declared the following policy: dissolution of the Reichstag, terror against the bourgeoisie, army officers, and against all who opposed him. Liebknecht agreed to the terms, and, says Bucharin, he was at once furnished with material and means for his campaign against the Government (see the telegram from Amsterdam, January 11th, in the Sunday Times, January 12th).

It is obvious that then it was decided in Moscow to send to Berlin the new unofficial envoy, M. Radek. In his speech to the crowd on November 9th M. Radek declared that himself and his friends were "invited to Berlin," and that he was leaving to-morrow to "help his brethren." His arrival was, however, postponed; but another Russian agent, Herr Eichorn, who had been employed at the Russian Embassy in propaganda before the first Revolution, for a monthly salary of 1,500 marks, in his new quality of Berlin Police President, was strenuously preparing the second Revolution—this time against Scheidemann. On the Christmas Eve 1918 the sailors from Wilhelmshaven, who had been quartered at the Royal Palace, began heavy streetfighting. Provoked by that mutiny, the Government decided to apply strong measures, which, in a very short space of time, quelled the insurrection, but brought

about open conflict between the Moderate and the Independent Socialist members of the Government. Three Independent Ministers left the Cabinet. The place of one of them was taken by Noske, the "bloodhound." At that moment M. Radek suddenly appeared in Berlin at the opening of the Workmen's Congress on December 30th. Liebknecht proposed the organization of a new "Revolutionary Communistic Labour Party of the German Spartacus-bund." "Comrade" Radek seconded in an address delivered in the name of the Russian Soviet. A few days later, on January 5th, 1919, according to a revelation "from an absolutely reliable source," by the Geneva correspondent of the Daily Chronicle (April 5th), a formal treaty was concluded between Liebknecht and Radek, as "Plenipotentiary of the Russian Soviet Republic." The act of signing took place in a little bare room of Rosa Luxembourg's on the top floor of a tenement in the proletarian quarter of the city. By the terms of the treaty Lenin undertook to

• 1. Recognize Liebknecht as President of the German Soviet Republic.
     • 2. Furnish important funds for Spartacist propaganda.
• 3. Place specially trained agents at the disposal of the Spartacists.
• 4. Order Soviet armies to take the offensive and cross the German frontier in support of a simultaneous Spartacist rising in Berlin.

Liebknecht, on his part, pledged himself to—

• 1. Establish a Soviet Government in Germany immediately upon his advent to power.
• 2. Observe faithfully and put into practice all the teachings of Lenin's doctrine.
• ¹ On that very day, January 5th, Vilna was taken and the Bolshevists were seriously threatening the Polish frontier.

3. Raise a Red Army of 500,000 men to be placed under the supreme command of the Commissary for War at Moscow.

Such was to be the beginning of the World Revolution; and, indeed, a rising in Berlin was once more started the very next day after the alleged date of the signature of the treaty. In Vorwärts of January 5th an interesting article appeared, signed by the Socialist journalist Friedrich Stampfer, which opened with a vigorous denunciation of the Bolshevists' attempt to bring the Russian Red Army to Berlin. Meanwhile the three promoters of the World Revolution, Eichorn, Liebknecht, and Radek, directed the military operations on the streets of Berlin from their headquarters in a great brewery in the Prenzlauerallee.

The results are well known. After receiving strong reinforcements of Government troops, Noske again suppressed the rising. It took about ten days (January 6th-15th) to stifle it. The last day Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg were murdered. Eichorn and Radek went into hiding in Berlin. The Berlin Government "in view of the support given by Russian Bolsheviks to the Spartacus mutiny," sent (January 20th) a wireless, "lodging the strongest protest against this inadmissible and criminal interference in the internal affairs of Germany."

"There are irrefutable proofs to hand that the movement was supported by Russian official personages, who took part in the movement," says the message. It winds up with a menace, "that the sharpest measures will be taken against all those Russians who have been guilty of supporting the revolutionary movement." And, indeed, at the Russian Legation "large stores of arms and ammunition were found. Much of the ammunition found bore Russian marks. On a Russian woman arrested 16,500 marks were found." (The Times correspondent, Copenhagen, January 15th.)

At that stage of the struggle there is also no lack of evidence of the part played by the Bolshevist propagandists and revolutionaries. Already, on January 9th, H. E. Bailey, the correspondent of the Daily Telegraph

(see January 13th), communicated that "Bolshevism is on the Rhine," and he goes on to say: "The leader of the rising is one Ochel, who was before the war a marriage broker, during the war a deserter, and who has lately published in Holland a violent pamphlet of his own. A Russian Jewess called Feuerstein, who came to Dusseldorf in some capacity connected with the Bolshevik news agency in Germany, is believed to provide a link with Petrograd." Fighting went on for many weeks in Dusseldorf.

There was similar news from Duisburg, the important Rhine manufacturing town at the outlet of the Ruhr Valley, on the edge of the then neutral territory facing the Belgian zone (Morning Post, February 21st). "Here, too, a general strike has been proclaimed by the Spartacists as a protest against the advance of Government troops from Münster. Mülheim, Hamborn (?), and Dusseldorf contain a large number of revolutionaries. The attack on Duisburg was a Bolshevist movement engineered by ex-soldiers formerly serving on the Eastern Front, and a number of Russians who have been drifting about the towns in the neutral zone. Russian money has been in evidence among the discontented miners, ironworkers, and bargemen, and a Russian is one of the most active members of the Soldiers' Council." A few days later (February 24th) The Times correspondent communicates, via Stockholm, that "in the Ruhr district the situation has improved since February 21st,

^<sup>1 The same news is given by M. W. Nevinson in the Daily News on January 13th. According to him, Mr. Ochel was formerly a matrimonial agent, and during the war editor of the Kampf in Holland, supported by a Russian Jewess named Feuerstein, who has arrived from Russia as agent of the Bolshevists, apparently with money.

and one of the reasons for the collapse "of the Spartacist attempt, he suggests, is "that the funds of the revolutionary committees have been exhausted since Radek's arrest and imprisonment" (see p. 142).

We meet with the same thing in Northern, Eastern and Southern Germany. Dr. Schröder, "with the aid of a German-Russian Bolshevist, named Sturm, has both organized and financed the Spartacist movement in Hamburg since November 10th; most of the funds are provided by Sturm." This is stated by The Times special correspondent from Berlin (March 22nd). At Dantzig, according to the same witness, "a Spartacist outbreak had been arranged for a certain day, and reports of the secret police showed that the adherents were many thousands." The argument used is the same as in M. Sturm's propaganda—shortage of food.

The attempted dispersal of the Weimar Assembly on February 8th did not succeed, owing to the strong measures taken by Noske. But in Berlin at the same time a new rising took place, and again the evidence proves the participation of the Russian Bolsheviks in this third outbreak, carefully prepared in advance. Says the correspondent of the Daily Chronicle (March 10th) about the "inner story" of that movement: "The most striking piece of information—and it is incontrovertible—is, that the real leadership is in the hands of Russians. With Spartacist rebels as their lieutenants, they have their headquarters in Berlin, and a secret organization whose tentacles stretch northwards to Bremen, westwards to Dusseldorf, and southwards to Munich. Preparations for the latest coup began immediately after the murder of Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg. The loss of the Spartacist

The insurrection was finally stifled. Their last stand was in the Lichtenberg quarter. When one of the Spartacists' nests was here denounced and thirty rebels were arrested, it appeared, according to The Times correspondent, via Stockholm (March 15th), that they were "under the leadership of a Russian Bolshevik,

who on December 18th had come from Russia and obtained provisional Prussian citizenship."

for March 5th. "The most alarming feature in the whole situation" a Berlin correspondent states, "is the similarity of the proceedings to the methods of the Bolshevists in Russia" (The Times, March 3rd). The observation is completed by a correspondent from Berne (the same day): the Communist current "gains much under the able leadership of Levien." On February 27th Levien declared that nothing less than the annihilation of the bourgeoisie could safeguard Socialism. "On February 28th Levien's proposal for the establishment of a Soviet Republic in Bavaria was lost, though, by an overwhelming majority of the Council's Congress (234 votes against 70). But then a compromise was unanimously accepted to the effect of building a National Soviet, as a sort of First Chamber with powers to initiate legislation, to refer parliamentary decisions to a vote of the whole people, and to co-operate in the administration. On March 3rd the ordered general strikes began in different parts of Germany, in order to second M. Levien's rejected proposal."

It is unnecessary to say how the strike movement fell flat and quiet has been restored. But for our purpose it is important to register The Times correspondent's

The precedents of Max Levien, the virtual dictator of Munich, told by the Frānkische Tagespost, are as follows: Max Levien was the son of a prosperous Moscow merchant. He took part in the Russian Revolution of 1905 and was arrested, but escaped to Munich, where he made the acquaintance of Lenin and became a Bolshevist. On the outbreak of the war he served in a Munich regiment, but was soon sent back from the front to a military camp. In November 1918 he joined Eisner in Munich, and after the murder of the latter came into prominence. After the second Revolution Levien was invariably accompanied by an armed bodyguard. In spite of his extraordinary brutality, he had a large following, especially in decadent literary circles of Swabians.

news (March 11th) that as a last refuge the Spartacists "succeeded in conveying some arms to Russian prisoners encamped at Ruhleben," and that "some or all the 5,000 Russians there got away during the night." The Munich authorities later on (see Morning Post, April 21st) recurred to the same measure: they "have liberated the Russian prisoners of war at Buchheim Camp and armed them." We must add that after the insurrection was stifled fifty-two Russian prisoners were shot who had participated in the fighting and who were dressed in German uniforms (see Morning Post, May 9th). In Saxony, after order had been restored by the Government troops, among the arrested eighteen Russians were found. Detailed plans had been discovered in the possession of the ring-leader, for the murder of the War Minister and others, also for the union of Saxony with the Russian Soviet Republic (The Times, April 17th, correspondence from Berne).

The March (6th-13th) Insurrection in Berlin was not brought to a close by a compromise which the Independents were proposing; Noske insisted on an "unconditional surrender" after the movement had been crushed with arms. The Government has not become weaker for that. On the contrary, this time the Bolshevist attempts at introducing a Soviet Republic in Germany were definitely disposed of. The complicity of the Independents, and the open alliance of the Spartacists with the Russian Bolsheviks, have helped very much to discredit both groups in public opinion.

The confident predictions of a new "June Revolution" did not materialize. The programme for this Revolution was now ready: the recognition of the Council's system, the establishment of direct economic and political

It is true that within forty-eight hours the Soviet was again in power, but the Communist leaders themselves admitted that the maintenance of their regime was "in any circumstances unlikely," and that "the movement was premature." On May 1st Munich was captured by Government troops—Bavarian, Würtemberg, and Prussian. This time the Communists defended themselves desperately, as it was their last chance. Their leaders were arrested, sentenced to death or killed by the crowd, for having had in their turn murdered and mutilated the hostages. The execution of Levine

(not to be confounded with the Russian Bolshevik leader) a month later provoked strong protests on the part of all Socialist parties, but all their appeals to a new general strike were of no consequence. They were unable to undermine the power of Scheidemann-Noske's Government, and only demonstrated their own weakness.

THE BOLSHEVIST SCHEME FOR FEEDING AND CONQUERING GERMANY.

The chief trump of Russian Bolsheviks was thus beaten. Germany was evidently unwilling to serve as a "first link in the chain" of the World Revolution.

It may have come out otherwise, if promises given by the Bolsheviks to Spartacists and Independents could be fulfilled. They were two: feeding Germany and sending a Red Army to help German revolutionaries. It sounded rather queer that starving Russia should seriously think of feeding Germany; but the idea of it was conceived very early as a constitutive part of the whole scheme of the World Revolution. A few days after the release of Liebknecht from his prison, on October 27, 1918, the Petrograd Truth (Pravda) states: "We must directly and in a business-like manner attend to it in order that we shall have a provision of grain for German revolutionaries, and forward that supply to help Liebknecht and Adler." At the same time, a meeting of different Soviet organizations in a provincial town of Kostroma resolved "to build the grain fund of the World Revolution, to assign for it one-tenth of all grain stores in the province, and to oblice every landowner to deliver for that fund

Anyhow, grain could come from Russia only with the Bolshevist Army, and there was already a "Red Army" in existence. By the spring of 1919 it made out about 500,000 bayonets. The "democratization" which helped to dissolve the Russian Army of 1917 has been since long thrown overboard by Trotsky. The disciplinary power of the commanding staff was nearly completely restored. The officers were closely watched

^<sup>1 See e.g. The Times, March 19th and March 22nd (the Hamburg strike against the sailing of ships to fetch food), the Morning Post, March 6th, the Daily News, March 13th.

by "Communist" commissaries, and shot at the slightest suspicion. The newly-conscripted soldiers fought unwillingly, and were always ready to desert, or to go to the other side. But they were, too, threatened by summary executions of their comrades at the first attempt to treason. Last, not least, if there was any motive which was likely to arouse the patriotic feeling of that rather heterogeneous mass, it was, to be sure, the idea of still fighting the Germans—no matter whether they were "Imperialists" or "Communists."

Baltic Provinces. "Trotsky, on February 15th, ordered the Bolshevist Army in Esthonia and Livonia to attack on all sectors of the Narva, Pskoff, and Wolmar fronts. . . . The order to attack was given in accordance with a resolution passed at a secret meeting of the Petrograd Soviet on February 12th."

Another telegram from Helsingfors (The Times, March 3rd) communicates that on February 25th, at the Pan-Russian Soviet Congress, Trotsky made a speech on foreign policy, in which he reviewed the military situation. He said: "We have four tasks to achieve: to advance to the coasts of Murman and Archangel; to take possession of the river exits to the Black Sea; to reach the former frontiers of East Prussia; and to chase the enemy from the Urals. We shall achieve them, cost what it may."

Preparations were being made, too, in East Prussia at that time in order to meet the coming Red Army. Reuter sent news from Basle on February 27th that, "according to the Frankfurter Zeitung throughout East Russia, pamphlets are being distributed calling on the people to destroy the railways 'in order to hasten the victory of the Communists in Germany.' Russian Bolsheviks are also reported to be in East Prussia in large numbers." Very interesting and much more

I Mr. Ransome states that most of the Soviet leaders have at that very time (February 10th) "in spite of themselves, acquired a national domestic point of view"—namely, that "they were thinking less about World Revolution than about getting bread to Moscow. Only continued warfare forced upon them could turn their desire for peace into desperate, resentful aggression" (Six Weeks in Russia, p. 33). Whatever the motive, or their psychology, the "World Revolution" continued to be on the day order. It was, moreover, the only justification and guarantee for further existence of Bolshevism (see pp. 54-6, his talk with Mr. Bucharin).

detailed intelligence on the subject has been wired to The Times by their Special Correspondent from the Hague (on March 17th). It runs as follows;

According to the advices from Berlin, Otto Petz, President of the German Soviet in Petrograd, has reported to Lenin and to Trotsky that Radek has succeeded in forming twenty-eight separate Bolshevist organizations in Germany. The ultimate purpose of these organizations is "to spread the idea of a World Revolution of the proletariat deep into the heart of the occupied regions of Western Germany." The same report estimates that up to January 20th no less than 11,000,000 roubles (nominally £1,100,000) had been expended for Radek's "mission to Germany."

The German Soviet in Petrograd publishes the news-sheets, all of which are printed in German and are largely smuggled into East Prussia. The greater part of East Prussia, and several districts in West Prussia, are now under martial law. In Petrograd the German Soviet has also established a Bolshevist school for German war prisoners. About 10,000 of these men are expected to pass through the school, and as soon as they have completed their training they are sent across the frontier to assist in the work of propaganda. At Nijny Novgorod and Samara there are collecting centres for German prisoners who have returned from Siberia, and these are being formed into the so-called "Western Communist Division," which is to be 20,000 strong. This division is being drilled for service in the event of a Bolshevist invasion of Germany, but will also be available for propaganda work. In Petrograd, moreover, the likeliest recruits are being drafted to a so-called "Liebknecht Brigade," which is now about 3,000 strong. The whole system is so arranged that German prisoners have no desire but to join these fighting formations or starve.

The use of war prisoners for Communist aims is here the same as had been made by the Germans of the Ukrainian prisoners for the invasion of the non-Bolshevist Russia, or, as we have just seen, having been made by the Spartacists of the Russian prisoners to support the Communist uprisings. A very ambiguous part in the game was played by German military units in the occupied provinces of Russia. Whatever be

the opinion of their Government—and it hardly could remain pro-Bolshevist facing the Spartacist danger inside—they very often quite openly helped the Bolsheviks in their offensive movement towards the German frontier. In an official communiqué issued by the Provisional Governmet of Latvia (see Morning Post, January 1, 1919) we meet with a formal complaint that "the German Authorities are acting in conjunction with the Bolsheviks." As proofs are given that the Germans—

• (i) Inform the Bolsheviks of the precise date of the evacuation of every place;
• (ii) Leave to the Bolsheviks railway material (Dorpat, Dvinsk, Rezekhne), armoured trains (Walk), arms, ammunition, food, and clothing;
• iii) Prepare systematically the handing over of the country to the Bolsheviks (Riga);
• (iv) Often give up the authority to the Bolsheviks even before the evacuation of the place by military forces (Dvinsk, Vilna, Minsk); and
• (v) Share food and other goods with the Bolsheviks.

One need not put in doubt the veracity of all these statements, which I might confirm from personal observation in the South of Russia. But the motive of the tactics mentioned may not always be a desire to help the Bolsheviks. A Riga telegram to the Localanzeiger (The Times, January 3rd) is perfectly right in its assertion that "the obvious desire of the German troops is to be sent home as quickly as possible. They do not wish to be involved in any conflicts with the Bolshevists." The same reason has been shared by the great majority of the Allied troops worn out by the protracted war. We do not know whether the Bolshevist spring offensive against Poland had been

to prevent their union. The situation is made quite clear by the following correspondence from Berlin (on March 29th) in the Daily Chronicle:

It is ominous that it is in the eastern parts of the country that the greatest efforts are being made (by the Spartacists). In East Prussia the Spartacist movement takes on more and more the definite character of the Russian Bolshevism. The Spartacists are endeavouring to get into and preserve definite touch with the Russian Bolsheviks, and the hope is entertained of bringing about a move of Russian Bolshevik troops towards and into Germany. . . . Some sort of connection has been already achieved with the Russian "comrades," and it is obvious that there is considerable activity on both sides to achieve this end. Recent events in Königsberg, for example, have not received a great deal of attention. The world heard of the occupation of the city by German Government troops, and of some street fighting, etc., without attributing great importance to the matter. The Russian Bolsheviks boast of their close alliance with the German Spartacists, and the action in Königsberg was undoubtedly undertaken to combat the establishment of communications by way of Kovno and Königsberg between the Spartacists and the Bolsheviks.

I may add a quotation from the speech of Mr. Zinoviev, the Petrograd dictator, on the occasion of the festivities on March 1st to celebrate the assassination of Alexander II in 1881. Speaking at an official assembly of the Soviet, the President of the Petrograd "Commune" said (see The Times, March 6th):

Our heroic army is destined to fight not only here in Russia, but also in the streets and squares of London, Paris, and Rome, for the great ideal of Communism. Recently, by concentrating a considerable number of troops near the Finnish frontier under the guise of manœuvres, we have said to all Europe: "Beware, bourgeoisies, before you touch the Red Lion. You shall not take Petrograd except by passing over our dead bodies." Thanks to our efforts, we find ourselves to-day in direct communication with the German Spartacists, and soon our actions will be co-ordinated. Unfortunately, during the last days of the war, Hindenburg succeeded in seizing on our eastern Prussian frontier wagons

and arms destined for the Red Army; but we shall soon replace them, and then the bourgeoisies of London and Paris will tremble anew.

According to a telegram from Stockholm (Daily Telegraph, March 10th), Trotsky also at that time boasted in a speech that "the Red Army will soon march victoriously over the whole world, and Russian Bolsheviks will fight on the barricades soon to be erected in the streets of London, Berlin, Rome, and Paris."

It would be too long to dwell upon all preparatory measures taken by the Bolsheviks for their invasion in the spring into newly-built border States of Russia. But we must still mention their negotiations in February and March with the Ukraine directorate in order to conclude an alliance "against attack, in particular by the Entente, Poland and Rumania," to last "until the moment when every nation in Europe declares in favour of the revolution" (a proposal by the extreme Ukrainian parties despatched to Lenin via Budapest, see the Daily Telegraph, April 9th, a telegram from Warsaw). It is also important to touch upon the Bolshevist activity in Poland, for which a vote of 27,000,000 roubles per month is said by Reuter (Paris, March 26th) to have been without discussion passed by the Central Executive of the Soviets. The account of this propaganda given by the Warsaw correspondent of the Morning Post (March 27th) is so typical, that we may be permitted to quote that evidence in full:

About the middle of December there appeared in Warsaw a Russian representing himself as the agent of an important Russian charity interested in relieving the distress of the thousands of Russians who were at that time, and still are, swarming through Poland homeward bound from Germany. This man, who from the first professed the strongest sort of Monarchist

views, was amply financed, and asserted that he had succeeded in bringing a large amount in Tsar roubles across the border by bribing a Bolshevist official.

Almost coincident with his arrival there appeared in Warsaw four other men, who travelled with neutral passports, and also claimed to represent a charitable organization, though not the same as that mentioned by the first man. They proposed to be interested in destitute Poles. I have seen these individuals, who were stylishly dressed and had cultivated cosmopolitan manners. On the strength of their representation that supplies were actually on their way for the relief of Polish sufferers, the Government granted them certain facilities. The first suspicions attached to them when it was found that the promised relief was not forthcoming. The situation was becoming acute when the four men appeared at the Polish Foreign Office, accompanied by the Russian who was earlier on the scene, and announced that they had made an arrangement whereby the charitable organization represented by the quartette would undertake the work which the Russian originally planned to do, and that this would involve large disbursements from a fund ostensibly for the benefit of Russian prisoners of war. Nothing more was said then of the promised assistance to the Poles.

Accordingly, at a large concentration camp for Russians established at Povonsky, on the outskirts of Warsaw, active work was apparently begun, and thus the matter stood for some time, during which the four alleged neutrals travelled quietly about the country a good deal. Then came a sudden development. No fewer than 436 prisoners in the concentration camp simply disappeared in one night. An investigation was begun by the Polish authorities, and it was soon ascertained that the fugitives had scattered themselves all over Poland, a fair number, however, remaining in Warsaw and its vicinity. Not a few, it was found, had gone to Lublin, where trouble was anticipated, as was the case also in Warsaw. These men, who were either agents of the Germans, or during the period of their internment had been thoroughly inoculated with Bolshevist doctrines and methods of propaganda, were being regularly supplied with considerable sums of money by the four alleged charity workers. Also, it was finally discovered that the Russian who arrived first was the former head of a Bolshevist seminary in Petrograd.

In the face of the Bolshevist menace from the East the German opinion stood divided. The Government inclined to a sincere rapprochement to the Entente, from which side food was expected to come soon. In an appeal to the troops issued by Hindenburg on February 14th the aim of the German army under his command was described as "defence of our territory against our new enemy, Bolshevism, which threatens civilization."

it was even agreed "not to allow Russian prisoners of war to return to Russia, where they might be impressed into the Bolshevist army (which was regularly the case), but to keep them in German internment camps under the discipline of Russian volunteer officers, to the exclusion of Soldiers' Councils, and under the supervision of the Entente." It may be also that, on the other hand, the use drawn from the argument of Bolshevist menace was the reason why the secret machinery of German-Bolshevik relations was kept in existence. The double-minded argument thus continued to be based on double-minded policy. While proposing to the Entente to "prevent the world from being flooded with Bolshevism," the Germans at the same time may have used the Bolshevist advance from the East, particularly to Poland, in order to improve their own strategic position on the Eastern Marches.

Here, as well as in other questions touching Russia, the Allies have not evolved any scheme for consistent policy. They did not intend—and practically were not strong enough to take the place of the retiring Germans. Their military help at that time was quite inadequate. The small borderland States now in process of making were to all purposes left to themselves. At some other place I shall describe the state of things that ensued more in detail. The point to be emphasized here is, first, that the Bolshevist military invasion under the conditions of a systematic Bolshevist propaganda, strongly supported with money, on one hand, and of no Allied policy, tortuous German tactics and internal weakness of local populations, on the other hand, might easily succeed, if the invasion of Prussia were the one and the single military action planned by the

Bolsheviks in the spring of 1919. But we already saw that as a matter of fact this was to be only the one of the four actions to be enterprised during the summer campaign of 1919. The other three were to be conducted against three other fronts, the Northern (Murmansk and Archangel), the Eastern (Kolchak), and the Southern (Denikin and the Ukraine). It is particularly Kolchak's and Denikin's offensive operations which were to be warded off, and it is fair to say that if the Bolshevist military contribution to the World Revolution had completely failed in 1919, it was chiefly due to the non-Bolshevist Russia's relentless fight against the Bolsheviks. This is also the answer to the question, Where was loyal Russia at the end of the World War? and what the war still going on in the east of Europe meant for the whole of the world?

It is owing to the necessity of dividing their newly-built Red Army into four bodies that the Bolshevist aggression failed to accomplish Mr. Trotsky's schemes, and had in the first half of the year no success at all in the North and in the East. However, it partly and temporarily succeeded in the South because of the transient collapse of the Don Cossacks and the half-hearted policy of the Allies on the Black Sea shore and in the Ukraine. Busy with struggle for existence on all these fronts, the Bolsheviks had no possibility to develop their own offensive towards Germany. That is why even the insufficiently equipped national troops of the borderlands proved capable to stop their military advance.

^<sup>1 Since these lines had been written, Mr. Winston Churchill confirmed the argument adduced by some very interesting statements in his speech at the House of Commons on November 5th.

3. THE BOLSHEVIKS IN HUNGARY.

The Bolsheviks did not succeed in breaking through the girdle of the frontier States of the West, such as Esthonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland. They were more successful in the South-West, owing not to their arms, but to their propaganda. The same local agent, the national feeling, which made out the chief obstacle to their penetration to borderlands, turned to be their ally in Hungary.

From the very beginning of 1918 circumstances in Hungary were particularly favourable for an extremist propaganda. According to Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett's illuminating evidence in the Daily Telegraph, the "National Council" that overthrew the Government on October 31st, and declared Hungary a Republic on November 16th, had been formed in January 1918 of the leaders of the Radical Wing of the old Independent party, the Jewish Maffia, and the Social Democrats. "The Government," Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett states, "since the declaration of the Republic may be described as half a Cabinet and half a Soviet." A few lines from a speech by Mr. Pogany, delivered on March 2, 1919, in Szatmar, may illustrate that characteristic. Mr. Pogany was the representative of the Soldiers' Council at the War Office, and he spoke from the same platform with the Minister President Count Karolyi.

I came here to preach rebellion... to preach revolution, to set fire... against those great landowners, capitalists, army contractors, bankers, and high clergy, who sweat the labouring population of this country. But I came here also to incite sedition against Czech bourgeoisie and the Rumanian

^<sup>1 His correspondence have been published on March 8th, 11th, 25th, 26th, 27th, April 1st, 4th, 7th, 17th, 22nd.

proprietory Bojars . . . against those who destroy the unity of the Hungarian people. We cannot allow that Hungary and Czecho-Slovakia should organize on different lines. Hungary can only be saved by the International Social Democratic idea, by the united front of the World Revolution. We must stick together, because Rumanian peasants, the Hungarian proletariat, Russian, French, and English workmen are all one.

The connection between the policy of the Conference of Paris and the Bolshevist Revolution in Budapest is very eloquently stated by Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett in a correspondence written three weeks before that Revolution (on March 6th—see the Daily Telegraph, March 11th):

It would be impossible to exaggerate the dangers of the present situation in Hungary in regard to its external affairs. The delays of the Conference of Paris in fixing the ultimate boundaries of the nation, the failure to listen to any official expression of Hungarian public opinion up to this time, and the permitting of the armed occupation of more than half her former territory, before the Conference has given its decision, by the Rumanians, Czecho-Slovaks and Jugo-Slavs, is having a deplorable effect on the Hungarian people, and is endangering once again the peace of Europe. It has had the effect of creating a national feeling throughout the country amongst all classes, and however much the nation may seem divided in regard to internal affairs, it stands absolutely solid in its determination to insist on President Wilson's formula that every people has the right to live under the flag of its own choosing. From the ultra-Conservatives to the most extreme Social Democrats, you only hear the same expressions of opinion, namely, that there will be no peace in this part of Europe if Hungarian territory is taken from her. . . . Every day the feeling is growing in strength. I have talked with elder statesmen like Count Apponyi, with President Karolyi, with Moderate Socialists like Böhm, the Minister of War, with the extreme wing of Social Democrats led by Pogany . . the most powerful man in Hungary to-day, with the working classes, and with leaders of all shades of public opinion. All declare that the people will never lay down their arms if their richest districts, on which they are dependent for food and coal, are taken from them, leaving them at the mercy of their neighbours.

This is the soil on which the Bolshevist propaganda thrived, and this time attained its aim. The head of the Government, Count Karolyi, took it under his protection so far as this propaganda was directed against the neighbouring nations. M. Vaida Voevod, the

¹ Bela Kun, born in 1886 at Szilagycseh, in Transylvania, formerly a Hungarian journalist, secretary and treasurer of the Workmen's Association at Temesvar, became a lieutenant, and was taken prisoner by the Russians at Przemsl. Kerensky is said to have appointed him chief of propaganda among the prisoners, but he worked for the Bolsheviks, made friends with Lenin, and when the latter gained power he organized the first Bolshevik Mission formed from prisoners of war returning to Hungary after Brest-Litovsk. It is said that Lenin furnished him with money to found a Communist paper, the Voros Nysag, which he edited for a time after his return from captivity. He was inclined to go a little too fast for Karolyi, and was arrested for organizing a Communist demonstration in Budapest and assaulting the police (February). After the Revolution of March 21st he became Foreign Minister.

that the ground for the Hungarian Bolsheviks "was prepared by a large influx of Hungarian prisoners of war from Russia. It may be safely estimated," he asserts, "that more than 100,000 of these prisoners, all tainted with Bolshevism, Communist, and Anarchist ideas, and scientifically instructed by the Russian leaders, have entered Hungary within the last four months. It is no impossible boast, therefore, of the new revolutionary Government in Budapest that it can get up, or has already at hand, an army of 70,000 former prisoners of war." It was coupled with another boast, that "a Bolshevik army of 300,000 men is waiting on the borders of the Bukovina and in the Ukraine to come to the aid of Hungary." The Deutsches Volksblatt of Vienna, which communicated that news, claimed also to be informed by one who had just (before March 24th) arrived from the north of Hungary, that Hungarian troops are already being concentrated according to plans made in common understanding between Moscow and Budapest.

Hungary was thus quite ripe for a Bolshevist revolution, when a new Note by the Entente on the establishment on the frontier of a neutral zone, which the Hungarians understood to be identical with the future political boundary of Hungary, gave signal for the outbreak. Karolyi resigned on March 21st. A "Soviet Government" took his place. Everything was achieved in a bloodless way. Next day the following dialogue by wireless ensued between Budapest and Moscow:

^<sup>1 Colonel Vix formally denied that interpretation. He stated that the President of the Republic was informed that the aim of the Entente is to separate the "Hungarian troops from the Rumanians by means of a sharply-defined neutral zone."

"The Hungarian Soviet Republic requests Comrade Lenin to come to the telegraph apparatus." Twenty minutes later Moscow replied: "Lenin is at the apparatus. I request Comrade Bela Kun, Commissary for Foreign Affairs, to come to the telegraph apparatus." Budapest replied: "Instead of Bela Kun, who is at present attending a Council sitting, Ernst Por, a member of the Central Committee of the Hungarian Communist party, is at the apparatus. The Hungarian proletariat, which yesterday took the entire State power into its hands, has introduced the dictatorship of the proletariat into the country, and greets you as the leader of the international proletariat. We express to you our revolutionary solidarity, and tender our greetings to the entire revolutionary Russian proletariat." Lenin subsequently replied: "Your message to the Congress of the Communist party of Bolshevist Russia was received with tremendous enthusiasm. In order to communicate the decisions of the Moscow Congress, and likewise to report on the military situation, it is necessary to maintain permanent wireless communication between Budapest and Moscow. With Communist greetings and handshake."—Lenin.

We have many specimens of that interchange of wireless communications which followed that advice. It apparently began by a note of doubt on the part of Moscow whether what existed in Budapest was really a Communist Republic. "Please inform me," Lenin asked Bela Kun, "what real guarantees you have that the new Hungarian Government is really Communistic and not merely Socialistic; THAT IS, Social-traitorous (socialverrätherisch). It is quite certain that owing to peculiar circumstances it would be a mistake for the Hungarian revolution to imitate our Russian tactics in its detail. I must warn you against this mistake." Bela Kun sends a detailed reply to his master. He states that within three days a decree for the nationalization of all land, as well as a decree for the annulment of loans, will be issued in Hungary. He claims that the power is fully in the hands of the Soviets. He says that his influence upon the masses

is very great, and that the shaping of the Soviets depends entirely upon him. The regulations for the elections of the Soviets are on the Russian model. . . . Soviets have been formed already in every village. Concerning the military situation, Bela Kun answers that no serious operations affecting Hungary have so far been undertaken by the Entente Powers; also that the organization of the Red Army makes progress and that Russian prisoners have been enrolled in the Red Army. He takes care to add that there is great unrest in Austria and in Southern Germany, and that decisive events are expected to occur within a few days. In his speech before the delegates of the old Communist party Bela Kun repeats conscientiously Lenin's lesson. "The Soviet constitution is being worked out at present on the basis of Lenin's instructions. It is not necessary, however, literally to copy the Russian constitution. We must learn from the mistakes of the Russian Revolution. The dictatorship does not in every case signify terrorism"—and so on.

Measures which were not considered to be "mistakes," but obviously were thought to be the very substance of Communist legislation—and which have been, accordingly, immediately realized in Hungary—were the "socialization" of all banking institutions and safes, of all dwelling-houses, the sanction of "illegal" marriages and illegitimate children, etc. Subsequently, the Hungarian reformers asked for further inspiration from Moscow. An intercepted wireless message to Chicherin requests the despatch of all Russian Bolshevist decrees and regulations, together with other Bolshevist literature, to Proskurov (Podolia), thence to be fetched by an aerial messenger.

The hopes ran high at that first real achievement in the line of the World Revolution. In an interview published by the Berliner Tageblatt a few days after the Revolution the Hungarian Ambassador at Vienna said: "We are joined to the Russian Soviet Republic by a very strong military and political treaty. . . . I do not believe the Governments of the Entente will venture into war against a world's movement such as Bolshevism, for the revolution in Hungary is only a step on the way to a World Revolution. . . We are inspired by the same ideas which guide the Russian Soviet Government." Later on (April 24th) The Times correspondent published the contents of the agreement between Bela Kun and Lenin, referred to by the Hungarian Ambassador. It was as follows:

• An Alliance is agreed upon between the Soviets of Hungary, Ukrainia, and Russia.
• 2. Up to the time of the other European States going over to the Soviet regime, they will give each other military and material assistance.
• Movements of troops will be made only after a preliminary understanding among the different Soviet States.
• 4. They will attack the Entente, and especially Poland and Rumania.

On April 16th Pogany, while on a trip to Vienna, confirmed these hopes and expectations. Interviewed by a representative of Der Neue Tag, he said: "In one week we shall be in direct relations with Russia and the Ukraine, and shall obtain the foodstuffs as well as the raw materials necessary for our industries, so that the hopes of the bourgeoisie that we shall be defeated by hunger and want are destroyed. I admit that Communism cannot win only a partial victory. But the Soviet block, consisting of Russia, the

Ukraine, Germany, and Serbia, would easily be able to deal with the industrial opposition of the capitalist States."

This state of self-confidence was still enhanced by General Smuts' Mission to Budapest. To use Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett's judicious expression, "the Entente, by its error in sending General Smuts on his Mission, has put a premium on Bolshevism." "The Soviet Government expected force," he states on April 10th, "and, to their amazement, they found recognition. The only satisfaction to be got out of this miserable business is the fact that the Soviet Government are now so confident that they have laid all their cards on the table."

And, indeed, General Smuts has come to propose the raising of the blockade, and an invitation of the Hungarian delegates to the Peace Conference before the final frontiers should be decided. In exchange, he demanded the formal recognition of the Note on the neutral zone.

On the morning of Saturday, April 5th, Bela Kun was ready to accept these advantageous proposals. But subsequently he conferred with Lenin by wireless, and, on Lenin's advice, on the afternoon he rejected the proposals. On Saturday night General Smuts steamed out of Budapest.

What the Hungarian Bolsheviks now asked for was complete freedom to exploit Bolshevism throughout the world. "We request the convocation of the Conference proposed by us," they said, "to consist of the representatives of the Hungarian Scriet Republic, Bohemia, Rumania, Serbia, Jugo-Slavia and German Austria, to meet as quickly as possible in Prague or

Vienna, and to proceed on parallel lines with the negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference." They also wished "to be enabled to maintain, both in the countries enumerated and in other countries, economic representatives." That is how even the moderate Socialist leaders, interviewed by Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett, explained their demands and their expectations (the Daily Telegraph, April 8th).

The Entente is now utterly powerless and dare not send troops anywhere, through fear of the infection of Bolshevism, and therefore are willing to negotiate with the Bolshevik leaders. . . . If they came here, they would join the ranks of our "International" regiments within a week. . . . In reality we Bolsheviks of the world have won the victory. We shall sweep over Europe, and every one will have to join us. . . . Now all cards are in our hands. . . .

So far as their further plans were concerned, Böhm, Pogany and other leaders explained them as follows:

In three weeks we shall have 150,000 perfectly equipped, trained men. In six weeks we expect to have 500,000 men trained or partly trained. The Entente will not be able to interfere, as they have no troops. We carry on the real warfare by propaganda. . . . Don't you realize what a wonderful position geographically Hungary has as a starting-place of Bolshevism? We are surrounded with discontented peoples, all ready to accept our principles. For the moment we shall not bother with Austria. They are already Bolsheviks, but they are dependent on Allies' food, and say they must wait before joining us. We shall start with Czecho-Slovakia. After Czecho-Slovakia comes the turn of Rumania, but that country may adopt Bolshevism at any moment. Bulgaria also is quite ready to throw in her lot with us. Jugo-Slavia will follow as a matter of course, and then we shall arrive as a solid body at the frontiers of Italy. You will see that in three months Italy will come over to us. Then, on April 8th, there will be a combined meeting of Workmen's and Soldiers' Councils in Berlin. We have absolutely certain information that Germany will adopt Bolshevism. . . . How long do you think France will

hold out? Why, we will eat her up in a few months, and then will come the turn of England. Do you realize that all the English propaganda is already printed? To None of you seem to understand how well organized the forces of Bolshevism are. We have every scrap of paper ready for Czecho-Slovakia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Italy, France, and England. No country will be able to hold out against us.

Before the end of April, however, this magniloquence gave way to blank despondency. Russian troops, grain, and raw materials, so lavishly promised, were not forthcoming. The Hungarian Red Army proved incapable to cope with the advancing forces of Rumanians, Czechs, and Slovaks. Finally, news has come from Vienna that the Entente has given France a free hand to deal with Hungary and occupy Budapest. For a time the Soviet Government in Budapest thought that their days were numbered. Colonel Wedgwood spoke in the House of Commons about the "assassination of the revolution in Hungary" (May 5th). Much more appropriately, Bela Kun uttered the supposition that "the Entente has condemned us to the fate of the Paris Commune." As April passed while Europe had not turned Communist, there was a talk in the Cabinet

See Ransome, Six Weeks in Russia, p. 24.

^<sup>2 See also the correspondence from Helsingfors to The Times on March 17th. "The Executive Committee at Moscow, on the initiative of Trotsky, has ordered the Red General Staff to prepare with all haste a scheme for the formation of an army of 150,000 men to invade Germany at the end of April or the middle of May, via Poland and Courland. The principal object of this army will be to support the Spartacists in Germany and to put on a war footing several hundred thousand Russian prisoners for a defensive or offensive movement on the line of the Elbe in the event of the Entente Governments still refusing to conclude a peace with the Bolshevists. The general idea of this plan is attributed to a certain Major Busch, a former German prisoner who is playing a prominent rôle in Moscow, declaring himself a Communist and a Spartacist."

Council of resigning and handing over power to a purely or predominantly Socialist Government.

Having received some new wireless councils from Lenin, and having won some military success over Rumanians, the Communist Government decided to hold on up to the last. The purely Leninite argument proferred by Kun was: "Even if we fall, we should fall in such a way that we benefit and strengthen the cause of the international proletariat."

Under circumstances obtaining it meant that one shall use the "breathing space" left to them by the indecision and procrastination policy of the Allies in order to expand their propaganda to the neighbouring States of the former Austria-Hungary. "I will speak frankly," Bela Kun is reported in the Pester Lloyd to have said. "My personal opinion (in advocating desperate resistance) is in no way based upon military considerations, perhaps not even upon political groups, but derived from my past career (as a chief of propaganda). It is that, if it be possible, we should not defend Budapest here, but at the Wiener Neustadt" (on the Austrian frontier, near Vienna).

However, as a contrast to Germany, the newly-born Austro-German Republic, led by a temporary Executive composed of moderate Socialists (Dr. Seitz, Renner, and Bauer) succeeded to keep the country quiet and to preserve it from Bolshevik and Spartacist excesses up to the day of February 16, 1919, when general elections were held. They passed under the double flag, national and red, of union with Germany and Socialism. The Social Democrats had the relative majority of 70 members; the Clerical Socialists 62; the other parties, mostly German Nationalists, 27.

The outstanding fact which dominated all politics was the desperate financial, economic, and food position. The population, particularly the lower middle and the labouring classes, were brought to the very verge of starvation, and their life and death question was that of the smooth transportation of foodstuffs by Inter-Allied commission, which might be interrupted by political disturbances. Coupled with the cheerful character of the Viennese, this motive led to calm, patient, half-apathetic endurance.

The Bolsheviks of Budapest reaped success in

Anyhow, even with that non-interference policy on their side, the Bolsheviks have not succeeded in sweeping Austria-Hungary, just as they had not succeeded in overthrowing the Scheidemann-Noske "traitorous" Government. Moscow and Budapest remained the only samples of the Soviet rule to edify the world. But, as long as they existed, the cause of Bolshevism was not

Hundreds of thousands of rouble notes are being issued daily by our Treasury. This is done not in order to fill the coffers of the State with practically worthless paper I but with the deliberate intention of destroying the value of money as a means of payment. There is no justification for the existence of money in the Bolshevik State where the necessities of life shall be paid for by work alone. Experience has taught us that it is impossible to root out the evils of capitalism merely by confiscation and expropriation. For however ruthlessly such measures may be applied, astute speculators and obstinate survivors of the capitalist classes will always manage to evade them and continue to corrupt life of the community. The simplest way to exterminate the very spirit of capitalism is, therefore, to flood the country with notes of a high face-value without financial guarantees of any sort. . . But this simple process must, like all the measures, be applied all over the world in order to render it effective. Fortunately, the frantic financial debauch in which all Governments have indulged during the war has paved the way everywhere for its application

Thus the lavish expense of paper money for the aim of propagating the "ideas" of a rebellion of paupers against the increased cost of living (ascribed this time to the "lust of gain of the international exploiters") might at once pursue the double object of increasing propaganda and creating new cause of disaffection for its better success. This also explains the enormous pecuniary resources deliberately spent by the Soviet Government for the expansion of their propaganda "all over the world." We now come to this last chapter of our inquiry on the international aspect of Russian Bolshevism.

This is untrue, of course, as the Soviet regime could not possibly exist without supplying their officials, their army, and their unemployed working men in the "nationalized" concerns with that "worthless" money on the increasing scale, proportionately with the fall of its value.

4. THE BOLSHEVIST PROPAGANDA IN NEUTRAL COUNTRIES.

Of course, Fritz Platten cut a really "vital figure" at the Conference. One must bear in mind that Platten, together with Grimm, had been the most active in plotting the German-Bolshevik conspiracy; that as

early as 1915 they had started separating the "revolutionary" International from the old one—the "Third" from the "Second" — through Zimmerwald and Kienthal, and that when the time had come to introduce the new plant into Russia, they easily got permission from Germany to let Lenin pass through Germany to Petrograd, then in a state of revolution.

socialistic or in any degree representative of the working class, they nevertheless would permit the Commission to go to Russia, and would give it every opportunity of becoming thoroughly acquainted with the state of affairs, just as they would any bourgeois Commission directly or indirectly connected with any of the bourgeois Governments, even with those then attacking Russia."

We know that the proposal to send a Commission to Russia was made at the Berne Conference by the sympathizers with the Bolsheviks. The latter took it, instead, as a most insidious trick on the part of the "Imperialist" Governments. Litvinov was heard to say that "sending the Commission from Berne was the most dangerous weapon yet conceived by their opponents."

Many Communists severely criticized Chicherin's reply, and it was then that the idea was born "to counter any ill effects that might result from the expected visit" of the official representatives of the Second International by speedily founding in Moscow the "Third International." The idea might be suggested by Platten, who hurried up to Lenin directly after the Swiss party refused to take part in the Berne Conference. Mr. Lansbury actually saw Platten in Berne openly declaring himself for Soviet rule. "Platten agrees that he and his friends are anti-democratic. . . . The people are too ignorant, too stupid. The clear-headed, class-conscious Minority, he thinks, must now use the same methods as those of the governing classes, and must assume control by violence and force" (the Herald, February 15th). Three weeks after these purely Leninite sentences had been uttered, we find Platten in Moscow, sitting at the table on the left hand of Lenin, presiding

at the founding of the "Third International" in Moscow.

Just because it was not a new departure, but rather a completion of the old, the Bolsheviks did not wait for Platten's announcement (on March 5th) of the foundation of the Third International in the Kremlin, in order to start their propaganda on a much larger scale than was necessary for preparing the immediate outbreak of a Communist revolution in the Central Empire

("the first link in the chain"). Already, as early as January 1919, the Danish diplomatist, Mr. Scavenins, in an interview with the correspondent of the National Tidende, gives a general outline of the Bolshevist world propaganda. "The Bolshevists," he states, "are masters of the art of propaganda. This work is directed by Radek (Mr. Ransome says Reinstein was at the head of the department, which he condescendingly, but hardly sincerely, qualifies as 'quite futile'), who has under him representatives of most nationalities. He (Radek) supplies the idea, and the other think it into their own idiom, with their French, English, or German brains. They are very clever in understanding how to attack every country at its most sensitive point; for example, England in India. They have Russians taught the Indian languages and send them to India (according to Mr. Ransome, in February a certain Mr. Eliava was going to Turkestan). They have sent others to China and to Japan. They have won adherents among the Chinese residents in Russia."

Mr. Scavenins, as a Danish resident, was just the man to know what was going on behind the screen. It was, indeed, the neighbouring neutral countries which served the Bolsheviks as the first stepping-stone for their propaganda at large. It was chiefly through Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, and Holland that they communicated with their adherents all over the world. There they had their old connections prepared for them by Germans in pre-revolutionary time: very often they only had to step into the shoes of the German propagandists. The best proof that the old tradition of co-operation has been inherited by Republican from the Imperial Germany is the nomination of German

The minute of the sitting of the Central Committee, where the report had been read, appeared in the official Izvestia, November 27, 1919.

the channel of Germany." That the Swiss Mission did much more than that is shown by the following avowal of Mr. Berzin: "The existence of the Soviet Mission in Berne and the enormous activity it displayed in the work of propaganda, not only in Switzerland, but also in the neighbouring and in more remote countries, has become a danger for the bourgeois classes in Western Europe." That is how Mr. Berzin explains his well-deserved expulsion from Switzerland.

On the occasion of a similar expulsion of Mr. Vorovsky, the Soviet's diplomatic representative in Sweden, the Swedish papers published on December 10, 1918, the following news (from the official Finnish source):

On the steamer Polhem, chartered to transport the Bolshevist Minister Vorovsky to Petrograd, a number of important documents were found, proving that the Bolsheviks are making energetic preparations to let loose the World Revolution. The headquarters of the movement are in Stockholm. Sweden now has broken its diplomatic relations with (Bolshevist) Russia. According to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the motive for that measure was the Bolshevist propaganda in Sweden. Mr. Vorovsky was at once deprived of the right to send telegrams in cipher.

And, indeed, Mr. Vorovsky's sumptuous residence in Stockholm had become a centre round which local Bolsheviks were gathering, and from which a well-organized movement, liberally supported by Russian money, was spread all over the Scandinavian countries and beyond. More than once Mr. Vorovsky was asked to leave Sweden: but owing to the support of local "Left Socialists" he always contrived to receive a respite. The Socialdemocraten stated that in December, at a conference of "Bolshevist representatives and Scandinavian delegates," a plan had been concerted

Mr. Vorovsky was so far right that, with his disappearance, the Russian Bolshevist activity in Sweden has not been stopped. If the Swedish comrades did "not see him again," they went on working with his substitute, a certain Mr. Frederic Stroem, whom Vorovsky left

behind him as a "Consul." In April 1919 Mr. Stroem was implicated in an unpleasant affair. A considerable store of Mauser rifles, costing 11,000 crowns, was discovered in the house of a "Left Socialist." In the official report the discovery was brought into connection with Mr. Stroem. He was one of the two Bolshevik members in the Swedish First Chamber against 19 Moderate Socialists, while there were 11 Bolsheviks against 86 Moderate Socialists in the Second Chamber. But this small Minority somehow contrived to overawe the Moderate Majority, and even forced them into making some concessions to their purely revolutionary programme.

Norwegian Socialists. One of their leaders, Mr. Egede Nissen, while in Russia, had, in a speech reported by the Bolshevist newspapers, guaranteed to Lenin that Norwegian comrades would go over to Bolshevism within a month. This did not actually take place, but here, too, from fear of losing popularity, more Moderate Socialists, like M. Lian, gave way. The Norwegian Socialist electorate is not Bolshevist, but all party offices are run by Bolsheviks. The Bolshevik Tranmael became the party secretary; the Bolshevik Scheflo became editor of the party organ Social Democrat; both represented the party at the Berne Conference and voted with the Bolshevist Minority. On the occasion of a Cabinet crisis in February the party sent out circulars ordering the formation of Soviets by all men liable to army service; they were to seize power from the officers and to enforce disarmament. During the negotiations with the Cabinet the party threatened a purely political general strike, and

Mr. Tranmacl suggested the "socialization by mass action," i.e. by seizing factories and workshops. But here he was defeated by a small majority."

There was no lack of attempt to extend the Bolshevist activity to Denmark; but here the Bolsheviks utterly failed. As early as August 1918 Denmark made representations to Sweden on the subject of preventing the incursion of the Russian Bolsheviks. As nothing had been done, and Swedish Bolsheviks were in the meantime carrying on propaganda in Denmark, the Danish Government was compelled to make stringent passport regulations (see The Times, February 18th).

In order to show that Holland, too, made no exception from the general rule, let me quote a telegram of The Times correspondent from the Hague, on January 22, 1919:

Bolshevist activities are creating very considerable uneasiness among thoughtful people in Holland. Meetings to commemorate Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg and to honour their memory are being held throughout the country. Behind these meetings are Bolshevist wirepullers. A few days ago at Oldenzaal the police arrested a German, in the lining of whose cap was concealed the sum of 60,000 marks, destined for David Wynkop, who is credited with controlling the Bolshevist propaganda in Holland. He is now said to be nursing the Bolshevist movement among the numerous foreigners in Holland, especially escaped Russian prisoners of war.

To prevent any further Bolshevist agents from entering Holland, the frontier guard has been reinforced and the frontier is very strictly watched. The Germans, too, have also lately strengthened the watch on their side of the frontier. The Dutch Government has temporarily interned some hundreds of miscellaneous foreigners whom it is impossible to expel. The Bolshevist propagandists here appear to be provided with plenty of money, which is brought to Holland by couriers from Russia.

^<sup>1 See the Morning Post, April 23rd.

It is said, apparently with truth, that several millions of marks stolen from Russia have been received in this country, while German and Russian newspapers are being extensively smuggled into and circulated throughout the country.

5. Bolshevist Connections and Aims in the Allied Countries.

A revolution "in the streets of London, Paris, and Rome" was sure to come in its turn, according to the Bolshevist ideology. But it was to be the result of a previous outbreak in Central Europe. The chief and immediate aim of the Bolshevist propaganda in the Allied countries was, therefore, not so much a direct revolutionary overthrow as a weakening and paralysing

of forces which might interfere with the success of revolution in the Eastern and Central Europe. "Trotsky asked us to do two things," a British Bolshevist agitator, Jack Tanner, was heard saying on February 2, 1919, at a gathering in London: "The first was to organize agitations to stop the British Government sending troops to Russia; the second was to bring about a revolution in Great Britain." "If we manage the second," Jack Tanner added, "it will please Trotsky and Lenin much more than the first." But the first was more realizable, and in order to show at once how and who in this country took to the task to "please" Lenin and to satisfy the demands of Trotsky I submit the following invitation to a Mass Meeting at the Memorial Hall in London:

HANDS OFF RUSSIA COMMITTEE.

7, FEATHERSTONE BUILDINGS, HOLBORN, W.C. 1.

Hon. President:

Hon. Vice-Presidents:

KARL LIEBKNECHT, LEO TROTSKY, CLARA ZETKIN.

N.B.—Owing to the bad postal and telegraphic arrangements we may not get the formal consent of our Russian and German comrades. We will take it for granted.

Acting President:

Secretary:

W. F. Watson,

T. F. Knight.

r At 400, Old Ford Road, Bow (see Sunday Times, February 9, 1919). Tanner is the editor of the revolutionary sheet Solidarity, published by the I.W.W. (Industrial Workers of the World). Mr. David Ramsay, an organizer of the S.L.P. (Socialist Labour Party), was on the platform.

A MASS MEETING

To demand the IMMEDIATE withdrawal of the British Expeditionary Forces from Russia

will be held at the

MEMORIAL HALL,

Farringdon Street, London, E.C. (near Ludgate Circus), on

Saturday, January 18, 1919.

Doors open at 6.30 p.m. Chair will be taken at 7.30 by Arthur Macmanus.

Music 6.30 to 7.30 by Muriel Davenport, Pianist; Edward Soermus, Violinist; Cedar Paul, Vocalist.

Speakers:

G. A. K. LUHANI, I.W.W.

W. Paul, S.L.P.

E. Sylvia Pankhurst W.S.F.

DAVID RAMSAY, N.A.C., S.S.
and W.C.

Ellen Wilkenson A U.C.F.

All Seats Free.

No Tickets required.

Seats will be reserved until 7.15 for Conference delegates.

T. Keeley & Co., Printers (T.U.), 47, Darnley Rd., Hackney, E.9.

(7,319)

On the part of the "German comrades," another aim was put forward after the Armistice and made the subject of propaganda in the Allied countries. Everything was to be done in order to influence public opinion to mitigate the conditions of peace. The French Nationalist organ, L'Action Française, had made on that subject very interesting disclosures, which were not refuted. I enclose the full text:

L'Action Française. The quoted text was published by Maurice Pujo three times, on June 21st, June 23rd, and June 25th, 1919, without eliciting any comment on the part of the Extreme Left Wing Press. The explanations given by M. Pichon in the Chamber were very evasive: he spoke of "rumours, telegrams," etc., being insufficient to undertake any legal prosecution.

On November 19, 1918, the German naval attaché at Madrid informs his principal at Berlin that his steps taken with Spanish mariners and working men, especially with Socialists, have already brought about certain useful results. Several telegrams asking for a "peace of right" have been already sent to Mr. Wilson and to the Socialists of different belligerent countries. The naval attaché declares himself able at any time to approach "the French Socialists, Longuet in particular," in order to give financial support to their efforts, and he urgently asks whether he shall continue that propaganda and approach (toucher) French Socialists, to obtain an undertaking that conditions of peace shall be made supportable.

On November 21st the German naval attaché at Madrid proposes a scheme of action to leading men at Berlin, in order to provoke an outburst of Bolshevism in France, or, "if it is true that one cannot count upon the victory of Bolshevism in France," at least in some corner of that country. This would be sufficient to frighten the Government and to let them take into consideration the wishes expressed by Socialists concerning the conditions of peace.

On November 29th the Admiralty accepts the proposals of the naval attaché to act on Spanish working men through agents and upon French Socialists through the intermediary of Longuet, in order to obtain "supportable" conditions of peace. "Do everything possible in accordance with your proposal in agreement with your Ambassador."

On December 10th the naval attaché declares that the time is too short for any favourable results to be obtained by propaganda among the Spanish Socialists with the object of their subsequent action on their French comrades. Nevertheless, the naval attaché continues this pacifist propaganda: he will send tracts and other propaganda leaflets to France, to England, and to Italy. But his chief object is to assist French Socialists with money through the intermediary of the Spanish, who will serve as men of straw. Means to get at it is open to him, but it is necessary for him to know what are the sums he can make use of for that purpose.

Both theses thus indicated for the Bolshevist and the German propaganda in Allied countries, the nonintervention in revolutionary Russia, and the lenient treatment of vanquished Germany, were particularly convenient in the sense that they might appeal to larger masses if defended by purely humane and

I must emphasize once more that no necessary connection exists between that state of mind produced in masses and the Bolshevist conspiracy in a narrower sense. The allied intellectuals, who served as intermediaries between the few criminal initiators of a conscious propaganda and the natural idealism of democratic masses, cannot be accused of being moved by mean motives. But it does not change anything in the fact that they allowed themselves to be used for the cause which is as far as possible from their lofty inspirations, if considered from the merely realistic side.

Mr. Ransome, who tries in his description of the Bolshevist doings to be as euphemistic as he possibly can, assures us that "none" out of the "hundredweight of propaganda in English," printed at the "quite futile departments" of a certain M. Reinstein in Moscow, "by any chance ever reaches these shores." I do not know whether Mr. Ransome thinks it good or bad, but I can assure him that as a matter of fact he is entirely mistaken. I personally possess copies of English Bolshevist pamphlets, bought here, but printed in Russia and bearing Russian inscriptions, such as, e.g., The Typography of Ryabushinsky's

their own profit. Sweep capitalism from England, as we have done in Russia, and join with the workers of all countries in a League of Republics of Labour." Thus, out of the "Hands Off Russia" slogan a pure and complete Zimmerwald programme, that of the "Third International," is evolved. British revolutionaries are being asked "to spread these appeals broadcast": "by these means we feel we can best assist our Russian comrades and also carry forward the fight in this country to obtain all power for the workers. We must now sacrifice the national interest of our rulers in order to achieve the international emancipation of the masses of the world"

If for purely humane and pacifist propaganda circles and organizations could be used which previously had been opposing war and conscription, other groupings and methods have now become necessary to carry the avowedly revolutionary propaganda of the Third International. We saw five British organizations of that kind mentioned in Mr. Lenin's appeal convoking the Third International (p. 120). But independently of Mr. Lenin's qualification, we have their own avowals, amply confirmed by the character of their present activity. They vie with each other for the first place in the new "Communist" movement. The old British Socialist Party (founded 1911), in a leader of their official organ the Call (August 1919), makes some fresh disclosures on the subject of Russian money sent to help British Bolshevism: "We, of the B.S.P., conceive it to be a high honour to be called Bolsheviks, because the Bolsheviks are our noble Russian comrades who have overthrown the hideous tyranny of Tsardom" (exact knowledge of facts is not considered

obligatory at these quarters), "and who are slowly but surely laying the foundations of the new civilization.

. . . And we would welcome any assistance they could give us: either in the way of ideas, literature, or money." But the B.S.P. is already behind the times, as it admits of a certain usefulness for the revolutionaries to control Parliament. On the occasion of the Clyde strike movement the Call tries to explain to the adherents of the new doctrine the advantages of taking the political power.

It would have been much better to have captured the civil government of Glasgow, for instance, as the control of the police would then have been in the workers' hands, and they would not have been ordered out to baton the workers on strike. It would have been well for the workers to have captured Parliament and the Government, as the latter have the control of the military, and in that case the workers would not have had the military called out to complete the policemen's job.

in Glasgow, this is not at all a true rendering of Mr. Lenin's teaching. They declare in the Socialist (February 13th) that "the S.L.P. was the first Socialist party in this country to direct the attention of the working class to the impossibility of achieving the Social Revolution through Parliament." It is true that the S.L.P. ran three candidates at the last General Election (Messrs. MacManus, W. Paul, and J. T. Murphy). "But these candidates," the Socialist goes on explaining, "two of whom fought Labour Party nominees (Messrs. Hodge and Walsh), repudiated Parliamentary action. They stated frankly that they had entered the political field for the deliberate purpose of revolutionary agitation, and with the intention of seeking to destroy the Parliamentary institution." "The S L.P.

participated in the elections with a destructive mission: it made an onslaught upon the political state, a part of its revolutionary policy." And, indeed, the leaders of the party have created the Clyde Workers' Committee, and printed its official organ, the Worker, as well as the Clyde Strike Bulletin; they controlled the Shop Stewards' movement of Scotland and England. Their profession de foi is as follows: "The S.L.P. is a revolutionary political organization seeking to build up a Communist movement in this country... which will not look to Parliament for redress;... which sees that the future society can only be built upon the industrial field; a movement which realizes that its political work is to sweep away the mass of débris which was once known as the Parliament institutions." In its electoral number of the Socialist (December 12, 1918) the S.L.P. is still more explicit: it publishes a long article recommending "A Soviet Republic for Britain." and signed by the name of "Spartacus."

But in its turn the S.L.P. appears for some other people to come a little too late. Miss Sylvia Pankhurst claims the priority because "at our last annual conference at Whitsuntide, 1918, we adopted resolutions in support of the Soviet form of government, and decided against Parliamentary action." "We" means the "Workers' Socialist Federation" (W.S.F.). But in that long title the word "Socialist" begins to sound rather objectionable to a Communist ear. And a new "national organization" appears, which calls itself simply "The Communist League," and pretends—again "the first"—to represent the Bolshevist doctrine in its purest form. "Why not unite?" Miss Sylvia Pankhurst asks. And she decides, at a new annual

conference on Whit-Sunday, 1919, to change the name of the "Workers' Socialist Union" to that of "Communist Party," "in order to emphasize its agreement with the aims and tactics of the Bolsheviks." "The newly-appointed Executive Committee is instructed to approach other organizations of like tendencies with a view to the formation of a 'United Communist Party." Too late, again. The "National Secretary of 'The Communist League'" superciliously states that Miss Pankhurst's organization "differs from the Communist League in that the former favours palliatives, and does not grip the need for the conquest of political power by the workers by revolutionary social action, before they can take effective measures for coping with problems of social expediency." And if even the newborn "Communist Party" has repudiated palliatives—well, "why did not our comrades find all these wonderful things out before?" "

A movement often becomes all the more doctrinaire and sectarian as the chances of realizing its aims decrease. At the beginning of 1918 the movement was by far more self-confident than it is now. At that time people did not know much about real Bolshevism, and greatly exaggerated its chances of success. It was then that Mr. Williams and Mr. Smillie openly advocated the "Soviet system" as the best form of "dictatorship of the proletariat" suitable for this country. Mr. Maxim Litvinov, the unrecognized Bolshevist Ambassador in London, recommended Mr.

^<sup>1 See the Communist, organ of the Communist League, vol. i, No. 2, June-July 1919. It seems that, owing to this criticism, the use of the name "Communist Party" was a little postponed by Miss Sylvia Pankhurs

^<sup>1 See the interview with Smillie in the Herald, January 19, 1918.

^<sup>2 The Morning Post, August 22nd, Mr. R. Smillie, III.

we believe there is sufficient Socialist consciousness among the workers to accomplish the revolution if means can be found to give it complete and definite expression. The Workers' and Soldiers' Councils will provide the means."

Coming back to the present time, we may judge of the aims of extreme leaders of the Labour movement, like Mr. Tom Williams, in threatening the general strike by the "Triple Alliance" from his article in the Call on February 20, 1919:

The industrial kings will reel on their thrones ere this struggle ends. Mr. Bonar Law will find that long before March 31st, when his Committee is due to report, the miners and their colleagues of the Triple Alliance have shaken the Government to its foundations. . . . One thing is certain. With the concerted action of miners, railwaymen, and transport workers, justice can be wrung from their oppressors and a clear lead given not only to the workers of Great Britain, but to the workers of the World.

In a more definite way the Call declared that the "Triple Alliance is taking the place of the Government," and that "the Triple Alliance is compelling Parliament to use its authority for an industrial purpose." "That way," it stated, "lies the emancipation of Labour. To-day, miners, railwaymen, transport workers are leagued together: to-morrow, their alliance will spread until it is a league of all the working class. Then we shall not knock at the doors of Parliament. We shall command it."

We know that others wished not to "command," but to "destroy," the Parliament, and not to "knock at its doors," but at once to use "direct action." This was the chief point in dispute between different currents of the Labour opinion. The alternative was

Of course, Professor Hearnshaw's answer was, that "the principle of the specific mandate is one which no believer in representative democracy can accept without demur." "Members of Parliament are representatives, and not delegates." "The remedy for a Parliament which (in the opinion of some) has ceased to represent the electorate truly, is not the 'direct action,' but rather a reform of the electoral system. . . . Direct action means the abandonment of the force of argument for the argument of force. It means the coercion of the majority by an organized minority. It means the

substitution of violence for reason. . . . It means the dictatorship of a small and extreme oligarchy of doctrinaire Socialists and Syndicalists who have captured the machinery of the great industrial unions and are using it for political ends. It means, of course, the negation of Democracy." "Mr. Hartshorn is wrong," is Professor Hearnshaw's just conclusion, "and I am convinced that if the views which he advocates should prevail, this country would sink into an anarchy of civil war and revolution, out of which it would ultimately emerge in a state of ruin comparable only to that now exhibited by Russia."

exactly the same methods that may be necessary in another country." Far from being a repudiation of revolutionary tactics, it is its confirmation, with the only (and temporary?) exception of England.

the political purpose of a strike. "Nationalization" is often repudiated by the Extremists as a right theoretical solution of their problem; if at the same time it is violently urged as a political issue of the moment, one can be sure that the use of it is preeminently tactical. But, then, Bolshevist influence can be also verified by studying just by whom such solutions are advocated. The strikes for political purposes were regularly unauthorized by the governing bodies of the trade unions whose members are involved. In some cases they were emphatically repudiated by the trade unions executives. We learn, e.g., who are the initiators of simultaneous strikes in Belfast, Glasgow, and London, at the end of January 1919, from the following "Call to Arms," largely circulated a week before (see The Times, January 28th):

The joint committee representing the official and unofficial sections of the industrial movement, having taken into consideration the reports of the shop stewards in the various industries, hereby resolve to demand a 40-hour maximum working day for all workers as an experiment, with the object of absorbing the unemployed. A general strike has been declared to take place on Monday, January 27th, and all workers are expected to respond.

Who are the people behind that "Call"? Glasgow is the storm corner, the notorious Clyde Workers' Committee is the working weapon, and among the ringleaders there are people like William Gallagher, the President of this Committee, a fervent adherent of the Soviet system, preaching revolution "as soon as possible," many times arrested for sedition, and sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment for circulating the article in the Worker, under the title: "Should

¹ See The Times, February 7, 1919.

Clyde Workers' Committee.

• The disarming of all nonproletarian soldiers.
• 2. The seizure of arms and ammunition by the Workers' and Soldiers' Councils.

The Spartacus Union

• I. I. The disarming of the entire police force, of all officers, as well as of the non-proletarian soldiers
• 2. The seizure of all supplies of arms and ammunition, as well as of all war industries by the Workers' and Soldiers' Councils,

Clyde Workers' Committee.

3. The arming of the entire labour population as a Red Army.

4. Voluntary discipline of the soldiers in place of the present brutal and degrading slavery. All superiors to be nominated by the rank and file. Abolition of courts-mar-

• Nomination of authorized representatives of the Soldiers' and Workers' Councils for all political organs.
• 6. Creation of a Revolutionary Tribunal to try the men chiefly responsible for the harsh treatment accorded our comrades now in prison, and of political prisoners.
• 7. Immediate seizure of all means of subsistence to secure success to the Revolution

The Spartacus Union

• 3. The arming of the entire adult male population as the Workers' Militia. The formation of a Red Guard of the workers as the active part of the Militia, for the effective protection of the Revolution against counter-revolutionary plots and risings.
• 4. Abolition of the commanding power of officers and non-commissioned officers. The substitution of the voluntary discipline of the soldiers for the old brutal barrack discipline. Election of all superiors by the rank and file, with the right to recall these superiors at any time. Abolition of courts-martial.

5. . . .

• 6. Substitution of authorized representatives (Vertrauens-männer) of the Workers' and Soldiers' Councils for all political organs and authorities of the old regime.
• 7. Creation of a Revolutionary Tribunal to try the men chiefly responsible for the war and its prolongation, namely, the two Hohenzollerns, Ludendorff, Hindenburg, Tirpitz, and their fellow-criminals, as well as all conspirators of the counter-revolution.
• Immediate seizure of all means of subsistence to secure provisions for the people.

Clyde Workers' Committee.

• 8. Removal of Parliament and Municipal Councils, to be taken over by the Revolutionary Council.
• 9. Abolition of all class distinctions, titles and orders; social equality of the sexes.
• 10. Reduction of working hours to avoid unemployment and to conform to the limitation of the working day to six hours and a minimum wage of seven pounds per working week.
• II. Confiscation of all Crown estates and revenues, which will become common property.
• 12. Annulment of State debts and other debts.
• 13. Expropriation of all land and properties, funds, and other securities now in possession of the ruling and non-proletarian classes.
• 14. Expropriation of all banks, mines, industrial and commercial undertakings by the Revolutionary Committee.

The Spartacus Union.

• II.—I. Removal of all Parliaments and Municipal Councils, their functions to be taken by the Workers' and Soldiers' Councils and by the committees and organs of the latter bodies
  • 2. 3. 4. . . .
• Abolition of all class distinctions, titles and orders; complete legal and social equality of the sexes.
• 6. Radical social legislation, reduction of working hours to avoid unemployment and to conform to the physical exhaustion of the working class occasioned by the World's War; limitation of the working day to six hours.

7. . . .

• III.—I. Confiscation of all Crown estates and revenues for the benefit of the people.
• 2. Annulment of the State debts and other public debts, as well as all war loans.
• 3. Expropriation of the land held by all large and medium agricultural concerns....
• 5. . . . Confiscation of all property exceeding a certain limit.
• 4. Nationalization by the Republic of Councils of all banks, coal mines, as well as all large industrial and commercial undertakings.

Clyde Workers' Committee.

15. The Republican Committee to take over all means of communication, traffic, and means of transport.

LONG LIVE THE REVOLU-TION AND THE RED ARMY IN BRITAIN. The Spartacus Union

The Republic of Councils to take over all public means of transport and communication.

IV....V....—Our motto towards the enemy is: "Hand on Throat and knee on Breast."

Under the conditions of the post-war industrial unrest, the propaganda of unconstitutional action has met with more success than is, perhaps, generally realized. Of course, responsible statesmen and Labour leaders have tried to stem the flood. The Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress as early as mid-February 1919, in a Manifesto strongly reproved "attempts on the part of minorities to set aside agreements arrived at by the well-established and constitutional procedure," and to ask, e.g. for 44- and 40-hour working week. "Unauthorized strikes," the Manifesto declared, "cannot and must not be tolerated." At a

later date (in May) the Parliamentary Committee refused to call a special congress at the request of the powerful Triple Alliance to discuss direct action. The President of the Committee, Mr. Stuart Bunning, in his presidential address at the opening of the Annual Trades Union Congress at Glasgow, on September 8th, defended the line taken by the Committee, and strongly objected to the idea of a national strike on political issues. In case of its success, he said, "If the Government fought it meant revolution. The project therefore resolved itself into a desperate gamble, with the lives of men, women, and children for the stakes."

Far from bringing the rank and file to reason, such arguments only served to discredit and to isolate leaders, who most decidedly opposed the current. Such as wished to preserve their influence and personal authority have learnt the lesson, and tried to adapt their views to the new terminology. The cleverest and most successful have made a selection of catchwords. They gave up defending such as met with stubborn prejudice on the part of the working classes, while they were of no consequence to actual Labour issues ("the intervention" in Russia, the "blockade" of Bolshevism); they took up the defence of the chief practical issue, which marked the line of cleavage in the attitude toward Labour demands ("nationalization"), and they used as a permanent threat against the Government the chief tactical issue which they were unable to believe and to join in: "Direct action." As a result of these half concessions and half-hearted defence on the part of the most influential and responsible leaders, the whole move-

ment gradually drifted into the channel desired by the Extremists.

against 67,000, although Mr. Ben Tillet's motion, directing the Executive "to refrain from committing the Unions affiliated to the Federation to strike action without a ballot vote being taken of the Unions concerned," was carried.

On June 25th-27th, at Southport, the Conference of the Labour Party, with nearly 1,000 delegates present from trade unions, trade councils, local Labour parties, and Socialist societies, claiming a total membership of about 3,000,000, once more discussed the question of initiating a general strike for political

ment as a whole would endorse the scheme, initially outlined by such organizations as "Hands Off Russia" Committees and Workers' Committees of different localities.

I They were thought to consist of the 700,000 miners, most, if not all, of the 500,000 railwaymen, some sections of the 250,000 transport workers, the 300,000 engineers, and a large number of the smaller Trade Unions. The vote for two (defeated) Miners' candidates makes out their general item.

were fighting the fight of Socialism for the whole world."

I need not dwell so long upon the Bolshevist movement in other Allied countries, France and Italy, the general character of the phenomena there being the same as in England. The chief difference is that both these countries, not enjoying the advantages of "insularity," do not also share in its drawbacks, and are much more imbued with national feeling as opposed to invading internationalism. That is why the internationalist movement, if even it takes here much more uncompromising forms and attitudes, is more clearly differentiated from other political currents,

and better kept within its own limits, thus becoming less contagious for larger masses. The fact that a far greater part of the population there belongs to the agricultural class than is the case in England contributes to the same result. There is, namely, much less hope left of arriving at the "dictatorship of the proletariat" by the method of Parliamentary action, and the only way which remains is, indeed, violence. We must not forget that the doctrine of violence and of the Communist rule by minority has been first worked out in France. The "petty bourgeoisie" of agriculturists here, as well as in Russia, cannot appreciate the advantages of a Communist Republic. That is also, perhaps, the reason why the Communist verbiage here being much more daring and sonorous, the net result of it is much less significant than in this country. There is, so to speak, much less genuineness and much more hypocrisy in it. The Vorwärts, obviously, is led by the right instinct, while putting all their hopes, not on France or Italy, but on England.

So far as similarity of developments within Socialism itself is concerned, the best evidence is that of M. Albert Thomas. "The Socialist groups in France," says M. Thomas, "since the Armistice have been torn by two conflicting tendencies. One set argues as follows: The war has upset the capitalist system. The middle class has proved itself incapable. It can no longer hold in leash popular forces in revolt. Old social bulwarks are crumbling. For two years, in spite of all predictions to the contrary, Bolshevism has prevailed in Russia. Germany, full of her own troubles, has so far only dallied with revolution. The Soldiers'

^<sup>1 See The Times, French number, September 6, 1919, p. 35.

M. Albert Thomas is still more explicit in his small leaflet, Bolchevisme ou Socialisme, distributed amongst his political friends.¹ Here he defends the second view, which is now only shared by the minority of the

Berger Levrault, Nancy, Paris, Fevrier 1919, p. 10.

One sees at once that within the French Socialist party, which has much more right in France to be considered as representing the whole Labour movement, the situation is by far more serious than it is the case in this country. Bolshevism and international revolution is the chief issue. M. Albert Thomas belongs to the extreme right of the French Socialism, while the views he combats are shared by the great majority. The question was even raised as to the exclusion from

the Party of M. Albert Thomas and his adherents for having voted the Budget after the Armistice. After a violent and protracted debate at the last National Congress of the Party (September 12, 1919), the passionate appeal for preserving the unity of Party has prevailed, and the sentence of excommunication was defeated by 1,427 votes against 490. But the crime of their having voted the military credits was severely condemned, and henceforth refractory members were menaced with expulsion. The international point of view has thus won a decisive victory over the national in the post-war Socialism in France.

discussion and international action. We may quote, as two outstanding instances, the Congress of Lucerne and the attempt to organize an international "sympathetic strike" of July 21, 1919.

be born. Neither democracy, nor parliamentarianism, as they are understood by the bourgeois rulers, are able, without profoundest transformations, to be equal to the new state of things which is being created under our eyes. The Lucerne Conference, lest it fail in its turn, must boldly define its action, push the energies of the masses to the maximum, and keep in closest contact with them."

Hungary. "One must first of all take vigorous action (they do not speak here of "non-intervention") to prevent the Socialist Revolution from being crushed," were M. Longuet's words. The Independents, M. Hilferding said, "will never consent to condemn the Bolsheviks," and M. Longuet outdid him. Why, we must express "popular sympathy with Bolsheviks, prosecuted by the bourgeois Governments." One can easily understand the allusion of M. Camille Huysmans saying: "Certain delegates whom the war had separated are now much closer to each other than certain others who had fought at their side during the war." One cannot better emphasize the work done at Lucerne. Internationalism was here finally substituted for the point of view of National Defence and the "Sacred Union." The majority of the Congress proved to be on the side of the Extremists, as may be judged by the approval given to some amendments moved by Mr. Mistral, in order to define the principles and the aim of Socialism as essentially revolutionary and communist.

"It is a long, long way from Berne to Lucerne," M. Marcel Cachin said. One might add that the way is still longer from Lucerne to the real surroundings in which the fight of socialistic parties in different countries is being fought. The great distance from doctrine to its application can be easily traced in one single instance where an attempt was made to bring about a comparatively modest international action in compliance with the demands of the resurgent International.

The initiative this time was taken by Italy. As early as April, after five months' propaganda in the official newspaper, the Avanti, an attempt has been made to begin a Bolshevist movement by a twenty-four

strike. This is how they state it in an Appeal published by the Freiheit:

The movement of the militant proletariat is making considerable progress . . .; the class struggle is extending and strikes root everywhere. . . . Gradually one begins to realize that it is not imperialistic peace that will achieve the great social transformation for which war served as an important stimulant; the aim of liberation can only be attained by the revolutionary effort of the working class, by destruction of capitalism, by the realization of Socialism by a proletarian dictature. These ideas are striking root even among the working men of the victorious countries. On July 21, the French, English, and Italian proletarians propose to make an imposing demonstration and to start on strike of protest against the imperialist violence manifested in the Treaty of Versailles, as well as against the help given by the Governments to the Russian reactionaries. The proletariat of a great number of neutral countries are also decided to take part in this manifestation in order to transform it into a manifestation of international solidarity and Socialist combativeness.

We have here a new instance of the working of the same pro-German machinery known to us on the occasion of so many attempts to impose on the Allied countries a peace of understanding in war-time.

The Administrative Committee of the C.G.T. (Confédération Générale du Travail) took up the scheme. But it was unable to carry it through in its original purity. Responsible leaders of French Syndicalism knew only too well that attempts to use strikes for avowedly revolutionary aims invariably end in a fiasco. There was much shooting and rioting in Paris on May 1st, but there were nearly no representatives of the great Trade Unions taking part in the armed conflicts with the police. Out of the ninety-seven men armed with revolvers and knuckle-dusters who were arrested, the great majority were young people whose heads had been turned by the Bolshevik propaganda, or men with criminal records, mostly foreigners—Italians, Russians,

The wish to have a thing done is not enough to make that thing possible. In spite of men's will, circumstances are sometimes stronger than their will. I am not of those who think that we must be taken in tow by the events. We must, however, deal with realities. . . .

Jouhaux went even further and gave his own view as to what "revolution" is. It is not the thing which one suggests sometimes by "rolling three capital R's," not a "catastrophic act bringing about the downfall of a system." "For conscious revolutionists," it is, on the contrary, "a long process of evolution which gradually penetrates a system, the action that saps a regime, and which, within that system, creates a new organism to take its place." "It is not sufficient to go out into the streets, to build barricades, to make a general strike. . . . A revolution which ends in famine is not a revolution; it is the destruction of it. . . . To make revolution means to start on a large constructive business. Well, such a revolution cannot be achieved by verbiage—it needs will and judgment. It needs action of a persevering and tenacious energy." M. Jouhaux reminds his audience that only a small minority among their members was ready for such an action, and still more so after the great influx of new members, who do not know much about internal divisions within Syndicalism itself.

The result is that M. Jouhaux in Syndicalist movement, as well as M. Thomas in Socialist movement, now belongs to the right wing. He in his turn had to defend himself against violent accusations of having collaborated with the bourgeois during war-time. "Jouhaux shares the responsibility with such people as favoured the war," M. Monatte violently shouted at the last Congress of C.G.T. at Lyon (September 1919). The other opponent, M. Monmousseau, said: "We must return to the true Socialist idea of class war, instead of class co-operation." And he very

strongly blamed the Syndicalist leaders for their lack of combativeness on chief international issues. "One has not made a sufficient stand against the unheard-of campaign which poisoned the public opinion on and about July 21st. One has not made a satisfactory propaganda in the country to raise the working class in favour of the revolutions in Russia and in Hungary. . . . One must have done everything in order to save Bela Kun."

Even Merrheim, the Zimmerwaldian, is now accused of being too moderate, and he avowed that he had told Lenin at Zimmerwald that France was not ready to raise the war of masses against the war and to start on building of the "Third International," as Lenin had insisted already at that time. "The truth is," Mr. Merrheim bluntly said, "that in France there is revolutionary situation, but there is no revolutionary spirit." Mr. Jouhaux's answer was as conciliatory as he could afford: "If one understands under class cooperation taking responsibility for the acts of the Government, I have not co-operated. But if it means going wherever necessary for the welfare of the working-class interest, then, of course, I have co-operated."

The vote of the Congress at Lyon, as at the contemporaneous Socialist Congress, was making for unity. Jouhaux's report was approved by 1,393 votes against 588. But here, as there, unity has been preserved only by way of drifting to the left of the whole movement. On December 19th a very drastic resolution to this effect was carried by the great majority of 1,633 against 323. The Congress repeated the Amiens declaration of independence of the Syndicalist movement from all political parties (meaning Socialism), and "once more" reasserted that the "Syndicalist ideal can only be

reached by the complete transformation of the Society." The class struggle was declared to be "a fact from which Syndicalism desires to draw all the consequences."

energy." The declaration, moreover, points out that no exertion to increase productivity of work is "reconcilable with the present regime." The leading idea of Syndicalism in determining their tactics is that "the powerlessness of the ruling class and of political organizations (Parliament is meant) from day to day becomes more evident, and so much the stronger appears the necessity for working men to face responsibilities in the management of Society."

"Management" is here used instead of "Administration," as a consequence of the basic idea of anarchical Syndicalism, that the "new order of things" is to be founded "not on authority, but on exchange; not on domination, but on reciprocity; not on sovereignty, but on social compact." From this point of view the Congress of Lyon is quite sure that not only the "daily work of the Syndicate prepares this overthrow of values," but even immediate solutions can be achieved "without delay," namely, nationalization of the transport, mines, water currents, and great credit organizations. However, they do not forget to explain that nationalization "does not mean state property." "Knowing the powerlessness of political institutions, and the character of power, we do not intend to increase and enlarge the functions of the State nor to resort to a system which would make substantial industries depend on officialism and red tape." Not at all. "We understand by nationalization confiding national property to people who are interested in it—to associated producers and consumers."

Last, not least, the Congress of Lyon would not forget the Russian Revolution. Their resolution "once

^<sup>1 Ramener ces relations a un marché qui encourage l'effort sans diminuer l'énergie.

more proclaims the inalienable right of the peoples for self-determination, expresses profound sympathy for the Russian Revolution, protests against every continuation of the armed intervention in Russia, and against a blockade reducing the people to famine because of its guilt of having risen against the oppressor."

The Congress also takes practical steps in order to sabotage the intervention. All Syndicalist organizations of transport are intimated to refuse to transport arms and munitions destined to the armies of Kolchak, and Denikin. The "reactionary" policy of the Allies helping both of them is severely censured; the Congress "exacts that peace shall be concluded with the Russian Revolution." Such is the last word of Syndicalism, and we can see that it completely coincides with the aims and the methods of the Bolshevik propaganda. If the danger is not so great as it looks, it is chiefly due not to the intentions of the authors of the Lyon resolutions, but to the fact disclosed by Mr. Merrheim. In France this revolutionary verbiage is very strong, but the true revolutionary spirit among the masses is decisively lacking. . . . One may differ in explanation but the fact itself is repeatedly asserted by such revolutionaries, even the Extremists who are sincere with themselves and with the public.

The difference between words and deeds which we saw increasing the other side of the Channel reaches its climax in Italy. The "official" Socialist party of this country is one of the most extremist on the Continent. After having to the last opposed Italy's entrance into the war, they took a prominent part in all German plotting for strengthening the international opposition to war. They, to be sure, were not guilty

But even that milder attitude met with patrotic opposition of one part of the population and with the

^<sup>1 See Dr. E. T. Dillon's correspondence in the Daily Telegraph on June 20, 1919.

A week later another attempt at a general strike was tried by the Extremists in Milan, Turin, Genoa, Bologne, and Brescia. After three days this movement was also defeated. In July a new wave of unrest passed through the Italian provinces, and the Socialists tried to base upon it their scheme for bringing about an international strike in favour of Bolshevism. The Parliamentary Group of the party had at that time voted an order of the day inviting their members to refuse every co-operation with the ruling classes, even

in the form of mixed committees, and to organize Workmen's Committees, where they had not yet been started. The second order of the day was to the effect directly to introduce into the Chamber the questions of amnesty, demobilization and cessation of all hostilities against the Soviet Republics in Russia and Hungary. The unity of international direction is well proved by these decisions. But the only practical manifestation of that unity, the strike of July 21st, was not a success in Italy any more than in France.

The new Premier, M. Nitti, sent a circular to the Prefects in order to prevent disturbances. "The Governments which do not defend themselves," he said, "have no reason to exist; institutions which do not make themselves respected are not durable; liberty and democracy do not live where there is no force to defend them"

These sound maxims were followed; the big Unions, in great majority, proved against the strike. The next day the Avanti declared that, among its advantages, one was undoubted: that of having "elucidated the Parliamentary situation."

Before I close this chapter I have to mention the important results of the political elections in three Allied countries on mid-November, which took place after the above lines had been written. In France these results confirm entirely my reading of the situation created by the violent pro-Bolshevist propaganda. The nation emphatically disavowed this propaganda.

Not only the leader of the "Defeatists," M. Longuet was beaten heavily at the poll. Even the more moderate Renaudel, who committed the mistake of surrendering his former, more reasonable, position for the new extremism of his successors in the editorship of L'Humanite, fell through. Even M. Franklin Bouillon, who conducted a furious campaign against the Peace Treaty, was beaten by M. Tardieu, one of its chief promoters. On the other hand, the four Socialists who were excluded from the party as "traitors" for having voted military credits were all returned. The Old Socialist "renegades," like M. Briand and M. Millerand, were elected. Moreover, the leading men of the Extreme Nationalist campaign, such as Maurice Barrès and Léon Daudet, from the Action Française, were also returned. This result presents a very interesting parallel to the British Parliamentary elections of December 1918. The Extremist Socialists, as well as the inconsistent Radical Liberals, there as well as here disappeared from their respective Houses. In both cases, also, the nation demonstrated their tiredness of the old gang of politicians by electing an unusually large number of quite new members.

On the contrary, in Belgium the Socialists have reaped the reward for their patriotic attitude towards the war and for their strongly anti-Bolshevist and anti-German propaganda in the international Socialist circles. They polled the heaviest vote in the country, numbering 675,000 as against 620,000 Catholics and 310,000 Liberals. They are here particularly bent on "reconstruction" after the war, and their choice confirmed the popular wish to see Belgium recovered as soon as possible from the economic ruin to which German occupation had brought this unfortunate country.

It is not so easy to bring the result of the Italian elections into harmony with our observations. The

Even such an organ as the New Statesman, which is always sympathetic to international Bolshevism, and which tries to explain the defeat of Socialism in France in the same way as British Radicals used to explain the December Parliamentary elections, namely, that the election was fought on a "panic issue"—even the New Statesman understands the general meaning of the November elections. "The nation is tired," this periodical states, "and there is a widespread longing for tranquillity. To many who have that feeling the Socialist programme seemed to offer only a promise of new adventures and continued strife—and a strife

for something too remote and too negative." We are here, obviously, as far as possible from the immediate advent of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" by means of a violent "direct action."

6. THE BOLSHEVIST PROPAGANDA OUTSIDE

It would take another book to draw up a detailed report on the Bolshevist propaganda in colonies and dependencies of the European Powers in the New World, Asia, Africa, and Australia. To write such a book one must base oneself on the results of local studies, which hardly exist at this moment, and, at all events, cannot be consulted. But the picture of the Bolshevist activity for the World Revolution would remain incomplete should we have to omit this chapter at all. We must satisfy ourselves with getting a flying glimpse on the unexplored field. A few lines of a newspaper telegram from another hemisphere are sometimes sufficient to show us that the same things are happening in those remote countries as are familiar to us from our everyday's experience.

We already know that the Bolsheviks paid great attention to having their literature translated into every possible language. From Petrograd and Moscow, from Stockholm and Copenhagen, they were spreading their pamphlets and appeals in every possible direction. A correspondent from Copenhagen (Morning Post, July 19, 1919) testifies that "both here and in Stockholm it is possible to get Bolshevist propagandist literature in any language, from the original Russian to Chinese and Hindustani, or—for no race is too small for conversion—

Let us begin our short review by the Sinn Fein's contact with the Russian Bolsheviks. A short message, sent from Helsingfors on April 25th, may introduce the subject. "The Council of People's Commissaries," the telegram says, "has rescinded the vote of 300,000,000 roubles for propaganda in France. Instead they have voted the sum of 500,000,000 roubles monthly for the bureau of general foreign propaganda. The first payment of 500,000,000 roubles, for the

month of February, was sent to the Sinn Feiners in Ireland. (The second, for March, was sent to the Spartacists in Germany.)¹

Bolshevism here stepped into the shoes of Germans and Irish-Americans, through whose intermediary the revolutionary elements of 1914-16 have found and learnt to know each other. Their more congenial lever in the Irish movement was the Irish Labour Party, which was very strongly influenced by Russian Bolshevism, and which stood in direct con-

See The Times, April 30th.

O'Brien, the Secretary of the Irish Labour Party, in an American interview, "since 1916 increased its membership from 8,000 to 80,000; it is now the head and front of the party." Mr. O'Brien asserts that the whole party "is in close sympathy with international Labour all over the world, more especially with the Industrial Workers of the World and kindred unions in Australia and on the Continent." At the same time it is "friendly with Sinn Fein, whose ideals and objects are the same." Now, the official organ of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union, the Voice of Labour, openly declares that they already introduced a Soviet regime in Ireland. "We have organized," the newspaper says, "bodies representative of the three constituent elements of Soviets, namely, workers, soldiers, and peasants. . . At present we have what corresponds to Workers' Councils in most towns . . . and in nearly every country we have Peasants' Councils in some form or other, and all these are linked up in a kind of loose federation."

Revolutionary aims and methods of Sinn Fein, especially of its "physical force" group, have become so obvious, and the reminiscences of 1916 are as yet so fresh, that there was ample ground for Government action. On September 12th a proclamation was issued by the Lord-Lieutenant in Ireland prohibiting and suppressing the Sinn Fein "Parliament" (the Dail Eireann), the Sinn Fein organizations, clubs, the Irish Volunteers, etc. At the same time a series of raids were carried out by the police and military force in Sinn Fein premises, newspaper offices and residences, both in Dublin and in provinces. Many documents were seized and numerous arrests made. The next day the

Trades Union Congress at Glasgow expressed "its profound sympathy with our Irish brethren in their hours of repression." In face of this conflict between official prosecution and extremist opinion the leaders of the Sinn Fein remain self-confident. It would be premature to say what will be the upshot of the conflict, but one is fully entitled to bring the acute state of things in Ireland now obtaining under the same head with other phenomena of post-war unrest, fostered and promoted, among other causes, by direct Bolshevist influences.

India. The chief motive for incitement to trouble was that stated by the Secretary of State for India, Mr. Montagu, in the course of the debate at the Commons on May 22, 1919: "I put first among the political causes (of disturbance) the perturbation and perplexity caused to the Mohammedan world by the discussion arising out of the defeat of Turkey."

The Morning Post correspondent on April 30th suggested that the aim of breaking up the railway system was "to cut out an enclave in the centre of the Punjab, consisting of the three districts of Lahore, Amritsar, and Gujranwala, wherein, securely separated from the outer world, they would be free to pursue their work.

it be, the part of the Bolsheviks in the Indian trouble is even more obvious than the part of the Germans.

In the article mentioned Mr. John Pollock warns the English people that a great anti-British offensive is to be delivered on the Indian front. And, indeed, the

were not late to appear. On May 6th the Bolshevist official newspaper, Izvestia, published an interview with the Hindoo professor, Baranatulla, who had just come to Moscow at the head of the Afghan Mission. "I am neither a Communist nor a Socialist," was Mr. Baranatulla's sincere avowal, "but my political programme entails the expulsion of the British from Asia. I am an implacable foe of the European capitalization of Asia, the principal representatives of which are the British. In this I approximate to the Communists, and in this respect we are natural comrades. The ideas of the Bolsheviks, whom we call the 'Intrakion,' have already been absorbed by the masses of India, and a small spark of active propaganda is enough to set all Central Asia ablaze with revolution. . . . In the normal course of events it may be expected that this summer will prove decisive in the liberation of India." I

The precedents of the "renowned Indian Professor," Mayavlevi Mohammed Baranatulla, advertised by the Soviet Press, are very interesting. As early as 1915 he was sent by the Germans to Afghanistan in company with the Turkish officer Mohammed Kazym Beg and the German officer Wagner. They had their headquarters in the Punjab and Afghanistan, and extended their propaganda far beyond the limits of these countries, disposing of very large sums of money and utilizing their network of conspirative connections. The result of this propaganda appeared already in 1916, in the form of an uprising in Turkestan. Beginning with 1917, these very "Afghans" were furnishing arms to Kirghiz, Turkmen, and Young Sarts, thus preparing a revolt against Russia. In the spring of 1918, according to instructions from Berlin, the Soviet Government arranged for a solemn reception of the representatives of the Mohammedan population in India, proclaimed themselves protectors of the Islam all over the world, and began spreading appeals "to all toiling Moslems of Russia and the East." The Soviet of Turkestan nominated the Turkish captain Kadem-Beg commander-in-chief of the Soviet Front of the Western Turkestan, and the "Indian Professor" Baranatulla and Kadem-Beg signed the Soviet appeal "To all Moslems of Asia."

A few days after these interviews had been published the Afghan troops were defeated at Dakka (May 16th-18th), and less than a month after the opening of hostilities Amanullah was asking Great Britain for peace. Already, at an earlier date, he ordered his local governors at Jelalabad and elsewhere to discountenance any attempt by Afghan subjects to interest themselves, directly or

indirectly, in the riotings in the Punjab. He has forbidden the issue of passports to agitators and any persons concerned in the Indian risings. But it did not prevent the Afghan Government from entering into negotiations with the Bolshevist Government in Moscow. The People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs in the beginning of August addressed a Note to the Afghan Foreign Minister, stating that the Soviet Government, having cancelled all secret treaties concluded for the enslavement of small nationalities, thus returned to Persia and other Eastern peoples all that was taken from them by the Russian Tsars. "The successes of our troops in the East," the wireless went on saying, "hold out the promise that we shall soon join forces with the Siberian revolution. Despite all difficulties, we can safely say that victory will be ours, not only in Russia, but on an international scale."

This has been written after the retreat of Kolchak, when the hopes of the Bolsheviks ran high. But the leading men knew already at that time that their days were numbered, and that Bolshevism in Russia is doomed to failure. That is why their schemes for the conquest of Asia began to acquire another meaning for them. In case of a final defeat in Europe and Russia they decided to transfer the centre of their world's propaganda to Asia. They thought for a time of China. It was easy for them to extend their propaganda to China through the intermediary of Chinese working men in Russia. A special revolutionary organization had been started for that purpose very early in Moscow. Later on the Bolshevist organ in Petrograd, the Northern Commune (Sievernaya Communa) published news that "the number of Chinese proletarians is growing in

Soviet Russia. According to the recent registration made by the Asiatic Department of the Commissary for Foreign Affairs, the number of Chinese at present exceed half a million (?)." The paper asserted that many of them were confirmed Bolsheviks, who were in close contact with the Labour and Socialist organizations in China. Bolshevist agents disposing of large sums of money, the newspaper said, are to be found on the frontiers, recruiting Chinese for service in Soviet Russia.

What kind of Chinamen were thus recruited can be seen from a witness by Mr. Djin-Yun-Huy, a special envoy of the Chinese colony at Moscow to General Denikin and to the representatives of the Allied Powers at Odessa. Mr. Djin-Yun-Huy declares that the Chinese recruits are mostly "Chunchuses" (Chinese bandits) and the most ignorant elements of the Chinese population. At the head of the Executive Committee, organized and paid by the Bolsheviks, is a convict escaped from hard labour. The Chinese serving in the Red Army, Mr. Djin-Yun-Huy asserts, are conscripted and retained by force. The Danish Red Cross tried to repatriate the Chinese workmen, but the attempt failed owing to the obstacles put by the Bolshevik authorities.

The Bolsheviks have also made an attempt with the Koreans. The Bolshevist newspaper Krasny Nabat (the Red Tocsin) recently published a proclamation addressed to the revolutionary organizations of the Korean people. The proclamation informs the Koreans that a "Korean National Union" has been formed at Moscow, "whose aim is to provoke a revolution in Korea and to give back to this country its independence." The Bolsheviks promise that the Korean regiments

formed in Moscow will come to the aid of this revolution. "The Korean workmen resident at Moscow have adhered to the Third International." "At the time when the Red Army and the Koreans will fight the Japanese on the Urals, Korea must rise and communicate with the Government of the working men and the peasants. It is only in that way that we shall succeed, having united our forces, to expel the Japanese from Vladivostok and from Korea. The hour of liberation is drawing nigh. Koreans, make the supreme effort." One may be sure that this proclamation, whatever its result, has reached its destination.

The measures for the Bolshevist "emancipation" of the East are already being taken in close proximity to Afghanistan. "News from Tashkent," The Times states, "shows that the Bolshevists there, acting upon instructions from Moscow, have instituted on a large scale classes for instruction in Bolshevist propaganda, for the purpose of training emissaries to go to India and Afghanistan. These classes are conducted in the Pushtu, Hindustani, and other Eastern languages, and are publicly advertised in the Tashkent papers."

The same methods are thus being now used to "bolshevize" the East as had proved efficient to "bolshevize" Russia. Propaganda on the largest scale by trained propagandists was and remains not only a secondary feature of the Bolshevist domination, but the chief aim and the most important application of their temporary power, which justifies in their own eyes their "dictatorship," as a stepping-stone to something greater and more lasting to come.

Quite unexpectedly, we meet with the genuine Bolshevik propaganda at the other extremity of Africa, Johannesburg and Capetown. Two Russians came to Durban via Mesopotamia, with passports furnished by the British military authorities on the strength of professed pro-Ally sympathies. Nobody knew here Mr. Lapinsky (an extremist "Menshevik" member

A turbulent demonstration in Brisbane on March 23rd disclosed to the world the existence of a nucleus for

^<sup>1 See The Times, April 3rd, May 22nd; Daily Telegraph, April 22nd; correspondence from Capetown.

In America the ground for Bolshevism proved to be much more favourable than either Africa or Australia. This is chiefly due to two causes: the far greater number of Russian immigrants and incomparably greater industrial development. The first motive prevailed in Canada, the second in the United States.

Lenin was right so far that in Canada severe measures were taken against the spread of Bolshevist literature.

^<sup>1 Questions and Answers about Russia, an Extract from a Verbatim Report of a Conversation with A. R. W. reprinted from The Liberator by the Worker's Socialist Federation, 400, Old Ford Road, E. 3. Mr. Williams left Russia in autumn, 1918.

What were their aims? It is shown by their actions. As early as March 1919 the Bolshevist character of their propaganda, disclosed by the decisions of the Western Labour Conference at Calgary, consisting of the representatives of all the Unions in Western Canada. The Calgary Convention resolved to separate the Western Unions from the American Federation of Labour and inaugurate "a movement to consolidate all the labour bodies into 'One Big Union.'" The Convention sent fraternal greetings to the Russian Soviet Government and to the Spartacists in Germany. It demanded the release of all political prisoners in Canada and the

immediate withdrawal of the Allied troops from Russia, under the threat of a general strike. It protested against the further deportation of alien enemies on the ground of their being true to the cause of Labour. The Vancouver Trades and Labour Council endorsed the same decisions. A Red Book published at Winnipeg in Russian outlined the general policy of Bolshevist organizations in the United States and Canada, and stated, as the cardinal principle of the movement, the overthrow of the "damnable trinity of Religion, Government, and Capitalism." Henceforth a campaign of propaganda was started for the introduction of the Russian Soviet form of government, thousands of copies of Lenin's addresses were freely circulated, and Bolshevist doctrine was preached for months without hindrance in the cities of the Canadian Pacific Coast.

On May 15th an open revolt was tried in the shape of a general strike. In the first days of the strike at Winnipeg, when its spokesmen were as yet bold and arrogant, they stated their aims quite plainly. "Winnipeg is now governed by a Soviet," the editor of the Winnipeg Socialist wrote on May 16th; "the seat of the authority has been transferred from the City Hall to the Labour Temple." The Secretary of the Winnipeg Trades Council told the meeting of strikers that "a bigger struggle is to come for the control of all the resources of the country." Mr. Ivens, the editor of the Socialist, was still more outspoken. On May 19th he stated that "in a short time there will be no need to use the weapon of the strike: we shall not need to strike when we own and control industry, and we won't relinquish the fight until we do control." On May 23rd the Labour News, the organ of the strikers,

said: "The fight is on. It overthrew the Governments in Russia, Austria, and Germany. . . . Now it has Winnipeg in its grip. . . . We shall fight until we win."

Mr. Robertson announced that there was positive proof as to the acceptance of large sums of money during March-May from Chicago, to be devoted to the spread of Bolshevism and the establishment of Soviet Rule in the Dominion. \$29,000 was to have been sent him on June 18th by special messenger from the United States.

circulate or import literature advocating a resort to force. Mid-June the Winnipeg strike leaders were imprisoned, and further arrests contemplated at Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Moose Jaw, Regina, and Brandon. Henceforth, much less was heard of the industrial unrest in Canada.

Russell and John Spargo. The resolution adopted by the St. Louis Convention runs as follows:

. . . Be it resolved that the Socialist Party, being the political arm of the working class in its fight for industrial freedom, and its power resting mainly in its clear-cut, specific declaration of political and economic principles, rather than in the number of votes passed for party candidates, and the purpose of the Socialist movement being the emancipation of the working class from economic servitude, rather than the election to office of candidates, it is therefore declared to be the sense of that Convention that all State organizations facing the solution of this question be urged to remember that to fuse and to compromise is to be swallowed up and utterly destroyed; that they be urged to maintain the revolutionary position of the Socialist Party and maintain in the utmost possible vigour the propaganda of Socialism, unadulterated by association of office seekers, to the end that the solidarity of the working class, the principles of international Socialism may continue to lay the foundations for the social revolution.

The social revolution, not political office, is the end and aim of the Socialist Party. No compromise, no political trading.

Senator Wolcott, in the Senate Sub-committee, rather naïvely asked Mr. Stevenson: "Taking the great body of the American people, were they not too level-headed to be influenced by this outfit?" Mr. Stevenson's answer was: "We must remember, Senator, that the really American people are not present in very large numbers in our industrial centres. They have made a very great impression on the foreign element." Here we come to the specifically Bolshevist propaganda among the American aliens by the Russian emigrées, such as Mr. Leon Trotsky. To show at once just how large their number was, I shall quote the following excerpt from the testimony of Mr. Thomas J. Tunney, the Inspector of Police, before the Senate Subcommittee:

Senator Nelson: How many of those Anarchists and those Radicals, I.W.W.'s and Anarchists have you in New York?

Mr. Tunney: I believe there are 12,000 or 15,000 in New York. I mean those who sympathize with the real Radical movement. I should say we probably have 50,000 who more or less sympathize with them.

Senator Nelson: They are really foreigners, are they not?

Mr. Tunney: Mostly foreigners

Senator Nelson: From what part of the Old Country?

Mr. Tunney: The three principal nationalities that they represent are Russians, Spaniards—I am talking about the Anarchist group—and the Italians, mixed up with some Germans. There are a few Radical Irishmen and Englishmen and a few Americans.

^<sup>1 The testimony was given on January 21, 1919.

and keep on organizing until you are able to overthrow this darned rotten capitalistic Government of this country." "He did leave the next morning, with about thirty-five or forty of his associates," Mr. Tunney added; "and from that date (March 27, 1917) until June 1st about 450 Russians left, with various leaders, and they also went back to roast the American Commission that was over there at that time."

The fact is that there were by far more than 450 Russian (Jewish) refugees who left America for Russia after the beginning of the Russian Revolution, to play a very important part in the development of Bolshevism in Russia. This fact explains many things which happened since. To make clear the part of American propagandists in Russia I may quote some testimonies of the American eye-witnesses given before the Senate Sub-committee. Here is the testimony of Mr. R. B. Dennis, a teacher in North-Western University, who had worked in Russia from November 1917 to September 1918, first for the American Y.M.C.A., and since April in the Consular Service. He had been all over Russia, in Rostov, Kharkoff, Moscow, Nijni Novgorod, and Petrograd. This is what he says:

... A thing that interested me very much was to discover a number of men in positions of power, Commissaries in the cities here and there in Russia, who had lived in America ... in the industrial centres. I met a number of them, and I sat around and listened to attacks upon America that I would not take from any man in this country.

Senator Wolcott: In the main, of what nationality were they?

Mr. Dennis: Russian Hebrews. The men that I met there
had lived in America, according to their stories, anywhere from
three to twelve years . . .

Senator Overman: Are these people over there, who have lived in the United States, taking part in the Bolshevist movement?

Mr. Dennis: This is the thing that, in my opinion, backed up by the opinions of other Americans, Englishmen, and Frenchmen with whom I talked when we got into Moscow, and were waiting there three weeks before we got out, and comparing notes, seems more interesting than the fact that they are there in positions of power; that these men were the most bitter and implacable men in Russia on the programme of the extermination, if necessary, of the bourgeois class. I never met a more implacable individual than a man that they called the War Commissary in Nijni-Novgorod; he has been in this country a number of years. Our general opinion in Moscow was, that anywhere from 20 to 25 per cent. of Commissaries in Soviet Russia had lived in America.

Senator Overman: Do you know any of them that have been naturalized in this country?

Mr. Dennis: No . . . I asked two, I recall, and they said they had not. . . . One man, when I bade him good-bye, said: "Good-bye, I will see you in about ten years. We are coming over to America to pull off this same show."

The same impressions are given by a man of very different set of opinions, Mr. Raymond Robins, the head of the American Red Cross Mission in Russia, who functioned as unofficial representative of the American Ambassador, David K. Francis, with the Soviet Government. Says Mr. Robins:

There was another fact of importance. There returned to Russia, immediately at the beginning of the Revolution, great numbers of Russians from America, immigrants, both Gentile and Jew. . . . They represented genuine honest men who had met America at America's worst . . . then came back to Russia and spoke . . . (they) interpreted America as the capitalist's heaven and the workman's hell. That was perfectly false, but it carried influence, because those men spoke the language, and they came back with that interpretation; and man after man, when I was fighting against the rise of Bolshevism, said: "We do not care for your democracy; we do not want political democracy; we are going to have a real economic Revolution. We did not

depose our Tsar to get twenty Tsars; we are not going to have a Tsar of oil, a Tsar of coal, a Tsar of the railroads."... To this group (of honest men) were added the agitators who were the paid agents of Germany or the doctrinaire Socialists of the destructive groups, such as the I.W.W.

that "soon they will accomplish the American revo-

Of course, Colonel Robins' present construction of the aims of his activity with the Bolsheviks is quite different. He agreed he knew all about the World Revolution, but he intended to divert it into the German channels. The following conversation at the Sub-committee is characteristic of Robins' official view:

Senator King: I want to call your attention that as early as the 22nd of December 1917 the Bolshevik Government stated that it was necessary "for us to maintain diplomatic relations, not only with foreign Governments through couriers, but also with the socialistic and the revolutionary parties which are endeavouring to overthrow the existing Governments." Do you not regard that, Colonel Robins, as a challenge by them to all existing Governments and an expression of a purpose upon their part to get into communication with revolutionary organizations everywhere for the purpose of destroying all existing Governments?

Mr. Robins: Thoroughly so, and from the beginning I was in full understanding of that purpose . . . but, believing that as an attack on Germany, which was a danger very near, while others were most remote.

Senator King: That is to say, you understood they were going to light the fires of revolution everywhere?

Mr. Robins: Wherever they could

Senator King: And after it has burned out in Europe we might extinguish it in our own country?

Mr. Robins: After it had burned in Germany, and it had been sufficient to fight the Central Powers, it would not go further.

Senator King: But you knew it was the purpose to destroy our Government as soon as they could?

Mr. Robins: Everybody there knew it.

Colonel Robins has brought it so far as to persuade the Ambassador Francis "to work together to that end," and was clever enough to receive from the Ambassador the following telegraphic acknowledgment (May 3, 1918):

I can understand the difficulty of the position of Lenin and Trotsky and their colleagues, and know they are compelled to profess when organizing an army, or preparing any kind of resistance, that such is the promotion of the world-wide social revolution; at the same time you, I know, have always felt that it was necessary to encourage such professions in order to organize any resistance whatever to the Central Empires, and were confident that such an organization would never be used against existing Governments, including our own. But it is difficult to induce our Government to accept that view. . . . You are also aware of my action in bringing about the aid of the Military Missions towards organizing an army (of the Soviet) . . . they failed because the Home Government refused to endorse the programme.

Mr. Robins also urged recognition of the Bolshevist Government by the United States; but here Mr. Francis disagreed with him, although, on January 2, 1918, on the condition that "the Russian armies now under command of the People's Commissaries commence and seriously conduct hostilities against the forces of Germany and her Allies," he finally consented "to recommend to his Government the formal recognition of the de facto Government of the People's Commissaries." If we are to believe Colonel Robins, England was also involved in that scheme through the intermediary of Colonel William B. Thompson. Says Mr. Robins: "He (Colonel Thompson) left largely at my earnest request that he should go out by way of England, and that he should make an effort to get a correct understanding of the thing in England. At that time Sir George Buchanan, the British Ambassador, and General Knox, the chief of the Military Mission, were absolutely unwilling to do anything like

What has not succeeded with the Governments, as a result of "diplomatic relations through couriers," might still succeed in the proper sphere of the usual Bolshevist action, the propaganda through "the revolutionary parties which are endeavouring to overthrow the existing Governments." They were partly the same people who had tried to influence diplomacy, who now redoubled their exertions to bring the Bolshevist propaganda back from Russia to America.

German, which changed its name from Die Fakel to Der Volkfriede, and we got a circulation of half a million a day of that; and then we got out half a million of a Hungarian paper, and a quarter of a million of a Bohemian paper, and a quarter of a million of a Rumanian paper, and a quarter of a million of a Turkish paper; and then we translated all the decrees, etc." Mr. Williams gives the following description: "They published, with those 2,000,000 roubles, three pamphlets in French and English... of those 2,000,000 roubles, 99 per cent.—I have worked it out to a figure—were spent upon literature in the languages of the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires.... The propaganda was concentrated against Germany and Austro-Hungary. They have tried to get some into France and England.... There has never been any particular attempt to get propaganda into America."

This was obviously the method of self-defence on the part of Mr. Williams, as well as Mr. Reed and Colonel Robins, to emphasize that they were using propaganda chiefly against "the German Imperialists." But Mr. Williams could not conceal from the Subcommittee that they also were ready to fight "every imperialistic design amongst the Allies that would throttle the Russian peasants and workers, and would turn their natural love for America into hate." To that effect Mr. Williams avowed to have "presented reports to certain members of the State Department, to Justice Brandeis, to Colonel House, and through him to the President." But he also mentioned that "in May 1918 there sprang up the idea of a Russian Bureau of Public Information in America." The

Government did not permit the Bureau to open, but both Mr. Williams and Mr. Reed, the unrecognized representatives of the Russian Soviet in America, have found other ways to carry the Bolshevist propaganda into the United States. They were helped by Louise Bryant, the wife of Mr. Reed.

The results of the activity of these and other American propagandists soon became patent. Mr. Stevenson stated before the Sub-committee, as early as the end of January 1919, that "the Russian Bolsheviks have flooded America with propaganda literature. . . . A large number of documents are printed in Russian, Yiddish, Finnish, and the various other languages which are spoken by large groups of our foreign immigrants in this country; and besides all this, we find that Socialist papers, almost without exception, encourage and support this movement. . . . Immediately after the signing of the Armistice there was a tremendous outcrop of this propaganda. The number of meetings doubled." The movement is "growing rather rapidly if we can gauge it by the amount of literature that is distributed and the number of meetings held. . . . I conceive it to be the gravest menace to the country to-day."

Asked what remedy he could suggest to complete his diagnosis, Mr. Stevenson said: "In the first place, the foreign agitators should be deported; the bars should be put to exclude seditious literature from the country; American citizens that advocate revolution should be punished under a law drawn for that purpose." Then Mr. Stevenson recommended "a counter-propaganda campaign, a campaign of

education." He wound up his testimony by the statement "that so long as the Bolsheviks control and dominate the millions of Europe, so long that is going to be a constant menace and encouragement to the radical and dissatisfied elements in this country."

The powers that be made no secret of their will to stop here in America the world-wide spread of revolution. The powers that be must reckon that they will have to expect the fight they have provoked. A time has come when the solution of social questions can be delayed no longer. Class war is on, and cannot cease but with a complete victory for the international proletariat.

between the Evolutionists and the revolutionary leaders, such as W. G. Trautmann and John R. Jordan. It finished with a rupture between the "politicians" and the "Industrial Unionists" at the Fourth Congress of the I.W.W. It was then that the "preamble" was amended in a more decisive sense, e.g. the phrase following the word "until" was changed to another:

The Original Text.

until all the toilers come together on the political, as well as on the industrial field, and take and hold that which they produce by their labour through an economic organization of the working class, without affiliation with any political party.

The Amendment

until the workers of the world, organized as a class, take possession of the earth and the machinery of production and abolish the wage system.

Thus the development from evolutionary Socialism to a form of revolutionary Syndicalism was brought to a finish. To emphasize the basic principle and the tactics of the renewed doctrine the following comment was made on the "preamble," in a leaflet on The I.W.W., its History, Structure and Methods, by Vincent St. John:

It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for the every-day struggle with the capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old. . . . In its basic principle the I.W.W. calls forth that spirit of revolt and resistance that is so necessary a part of the equipment of any organization of the workers in their struggle for economic independence. In a word, its basic principle makes the I.W.W. a fighting organization. . . . The tactics used are determined solely by the power of the organization to make good in their use. The question of "right" and "wrong" does not concern

us. No terms made with an employer are final. All peace so long as the wage system lasts is but an armed truce. . . . Failing to force concession from the employers by the strike, work is resumed and "sabotage" is used. . . In short, the I.W.W. advocates the use of militant "direct action" tactics to the full extent of our power to make good.

Of course, it was now easy for the I.W.W. to endorse the practically identical doctrine and tactics of Bolshevism. In a pamphlet of Harrison George (The Red Dawn) this identity is formally stated. "The wave of bourgeois ideology," the author says, "that poured into Russia now is overturned, and, with terrific force, its proletarian crest sweeps outwards over Europe. The war between national groups of the bourgeoisie is changing, under pressure of the Russian workers, into a war between classes. . . . The world proletariat shall crush its enemy, without and within; break its rusty chains and establish real freedom—Industrial Freedom."

This is the conventional internationalist doctrine. It made out the substance of the rapidly growing Bolshevist propaganda amongst the American working class, chiefly that layer of alien extraction amongst them in the United States. The results are easily guessed. Here, as everywhere, we meet with a series of strikes. At the beginning, these are mostly unauthorized strikes, organized by small irresponsible groups, independently and sometimes against the formal decisions of larger Labour organizations. At a later stage, the recognized Labour leaders, even so moderate as Mr. Gompers, find themselves obliged to follow the general trend of Labour opinion. They make concessions to it and, just as is the case in Britain, proclaim strikes of their own in order to be

able to control the movement. At that stage a process of differentiation begins between the extremist and more moderate elements in the Labour movement. The Government feels obliged and encouraged to take drastic measures against the extremist lead. The final result here, as well as in Great Britain, is far from being reached, but, as a result of repression, the extremist movement for a time subsides.

So far the trend of events runs parallel to what we know in Great Britain and in France. But the special feature for America is that, in the first place, the Labour movement is here by far not so much developed as in Europe, while the capitalist side is much more strongly organized and much more influential both in the legislature and in the administration. In the second place, as a result of a weaker combativeness of the native working man—which is not necessarily explained by his lesser consciousness of his class interest—the aggressive forms of Labour movement are chiefly developing amidst the aliens. That is why at the beginning the whole extremist movement is represented by aliens. The climax is reached when national Labour organizations join in it. But, then, the process of differentiation of moderate from extremist element is very much hastened because it finds a strong support in the national movement against the alien danger.

It is not difficult to determine the exact moment when the general trend of the Labour unrest from extremist and alien becomes national and chiefly industrial. It coincides with the moment of failure of the Industrial Conference convened at Washington on October 6th by President Wilson in order to let the representatives of both sides, employers and employees, discuss plans for a better understanding. The Conference was preceded by the first strike on a national scale, that of steel workers, declared on September 21st. It was followed by another, by far more dangerous, nation-wide strike of miners, declared on November 1, 1919. The steel strike is described by The Times correspondent from New York as "an attempt by the extreme elements in the Labour movement to take advantage of what would otherwise be a sound case for the men, and to push it to what amounts to an agitation in the direction of Syndicalism." The strike has been initially ignored by the great majority of American-born workmen. The Syndicalist propaganda has had the greatest effect in Cleveland, Chicago, Pittsburg, and other districts where large numbers of Germans, Austrians, Russian Jews, etc., are employed. The American Federation of Labour with Mr. Gompers kept silent.

The case was quite different with the miners' strike, which took place after the Industrial Conference had broken up, owing to the uncompromising attitude taken by the employers. It was then that the idea of a "triple alliance" for America (industrial unions, railways unions, and farmers) made its appearance. Mr. Gompers, who was known to be very hostile to extremism, but who felt now personally weakened by his impotence at the Industrial Conference, was obliged to make concessions. He declared now that he was willing "to have full responsibility for anything that might happen" in the coming struggle for the miners. The coal strike was announced a few days before November 1st. It was intended to be a strike on purely industrial issues, as differentiated from the

The Government, backed by the public opinion and the owners, took at once a firm stand. President Wilson from his sick-bed launched a "solemn request" to the miners not to strike, and in case the strike occurs warned them that they will be guilty of a "grave legal and moral wrong," and that the law will be enforced. Federal troops in large numbers were moved to the mining districts; law offices were directed to take legal action against the organizers, and an injunction forbidding the coal strike was granted in the Federal Court at Indianopolis on October 31st. Further

injunctions were to be sought in the various States against local leaders.

the workers in America. Funds for carrying on all this propaganda, according to Senator Lusk, who presided over a Legislative Committee investigating Bolshevism, were "furnished mainly by large contributors abroad and in this country." Half a hundred revolutionary newspapers, printed in foreign languages and having a circulation, largely through free distribution, of 3,000,000 copies in the great industrial centres, were subsidized by "Parlour Bolsheviks"—otherwise wealthy amateur revolutionists living in New York. This is confirmed by Mr. Reed's testimony before the Senate Sub-committee. "You know," he said, "there are some wealthy women in New York who have nothing to do with their money except something like that."

Some of the documents seized in the raids on the Union of Russian Workers—printed in Russian language—were made public by the authorities. Amongst them there is a Manifesto outlining the plan of a Bolshevist revolution, as follows:

What should be our Means of carrying on the Fight

... We must conscientiously hasten the elementary movement of the struggle of the working class. We must convert small strikes into general ones, and convert the latter into an armed revolt of the labouring masses against capital and the State. At the time of this revolt we must at the first favourable opportunity proceed to the immediate seizure of all means of production and all articles of consumption, and name the working classes masters in fact of all general wealth. At the same time we must mercilessly destroy all remains of governmental authority and class domination by liberating prisoners, demolishing prisons and police offices, and destroying all legal papers pertaining to private ownership of property, all field fences and boundaries, and burn all certificates of indebtedness. In a word, we must take care that everything is wiped out off the earth that is a reminder of the right of private ownership of property. . . .

The membership books of the Union of Russian Workers, which had sixty branches in the States, contained the following preamble:

Because the struggle between the classes will only end when the toiling masses, organized as a class, understand their true interests, and make themselves masters of all the world's riches by means of a violent social revolution, for the attainment of these aims we consider of final importance the necessary building up of a wide revolutionary organization of toilers which, while conducting a direct struggle with all institutions of capitalist government, must train the working classes to take initiative and independent action, and then educate in it the consciousness of the absolute necessity of a general strike—of social revolution.

There is not the slightest doubt as to the intense resentment roused among American citizens by this alien extremist propaganda. A Bill was introduced to the Congress for spending 5,000,000 dollars this year, and twice as much henceforth annually, for the "Americanization of the alien." The Bill was supported officially by figures showing that some 3,000,000 out of 30,000,000 of alien blood cannot speak English, and more than 5,000,000 cannot read it. Within a three to nine years' period after their arrival only 8 per cent. of Russians were stated to have become citizens. "How can we," the New York Tribune asked, "ever hope for a united nation amidst such conditions? What can we expect except that extreme leaders, appealing to these alien groups in their own tongue, can easily win them to stupid and suicidal attacks upon that which they do not understand?"

However, the question of alien propaganda could not cover the other issue, that between capital and

A new Conference between the union leaders and the employers, summoned at Washington on November 17th, so far from improving the situation, brought it to a complete deadlock. The Secretary of Labour, Mr. W. B. Wilson, having produced the figures showing that the cost of living in mining districts since December 1917 had increased 79 8 per cent., suggested a wage increase of 31 6 per cent. over the existing scale

in spite of all successes of the extremist movement amidst the working class, there is no real fear of the "Red" peril in America. The easy cure from Bolshevism is generally found in adequate legislation and in energetic and intelligent way of handling the law. It remains to be seen whether that attitude of public opinion is not too much optimistic.

CONCLUSION

MR. RAYMOND ROBINS, speaking before the American Senate Sub-committee, told them one of his conversations with Lenin, which might serve as a motto to this book. "Nicolas Lenin, sitting in the Kremlin, said to me," Mr. Robins rather solemnly declared, "the Russian Revolution will probably fail. We have not developed far enough in the capitalist stage, we are too primitive to realize the socialistic state. But we will keep the flame of the Revolution alive in Russia until it breaks in Europe. It will break first in Bulgaria, and the Bulgarians will cease fighting. It will break next in Austria, and the Austrians will cease fighting. When you hear that the Workmen's, Soldiers', Peasants' Soviet is in command in Berlin, remember that the little man in the Kremlin told you that a proletarian World Revolution was born."

I began writing this book when the Bolshevist hopes for the World Revolution ran high, and when they still expected the Berlin Soviet to appear very soon, as a result of their military and propagandist offensive on the Western frontier of Russia. When I am finishing the book things have very much changed. Out of the two prophecies of Mr. Lenin one is not materialized: there is no revolution and no Soviet in Berlin. On the contrary, the other prophecy, about the probable

failure of the Russian Revolution, is now being proved true by everything we learn from within Bolshevist Russia, whatever be the result of the military pressure from outside. As the Bolshevist monomaniacs, in spite of all, still stick to their idea of the World Revolution, they are now busy preparing for another stage of it, which is rather defensive than offensive. It is the retreat to the East, no matter which, Turkestan or China. These countries are still less "developed in the capitalistic stage" and still more "primitive." But, obviously, "primitiveness" is the necessary condition for the success, at any rate temporary, of a "Communist" revolution and of a tyrannical rule by the minority of a minority.

Mr. Lenin, of course, is too clever not to know that this kind of revolution cannot possibly evolve into anything like a "socialist state."

But what about this alternative, for the sake of which all these experiments in anima vili are being tried: the breaking out of the flame of the "Communist" Revolution in Europe and in the New World?

While I was writing on the international danger of Bolshevism, this danger was gradually decreasing. Does that mean that all danger is now over?

The abstract of facts which are here collected is enough to show that this is far from being the case. To be sure, the abnormal conditions created by the World War and the world's exhaustion, by the economic and financial crisis, will be passing away, rather sooner than later. With their disappearance, momentary causes—which were breeding unrest and favouring turbulent and anti-social elements of the community—will also cease to work. No "proletarian

dictatorship" is likely to develop anywhere under these changing conditions. But to bring about this satisfactory result, a mere "wait-and-see" policy is not sufficient. If even Bolshevism is really passing away—as it may—one has got to take stock of the rather rich inheritance of the Bolshevist ideas and catchwords spread all over the world by the pro-Bolshevist propaganda, and to oppose to it new educational activities or legal action.

The "Hands Off Russia" slogan is the most typical part of this inheritance. Shall one leave "the fire to burn out" by itself in that very "hearth" of the world's conflagration, in Bolshevist Russia? The advice seems to find sympathetic reception in this country. Everybody agrees that without pacified Russia there can be no peace in the world and no League of Nations. But in flagrant contradiction with this obvious truth, very prominent people go on saying that the best method of bringing peace to Russia consists in letting her "stew in her own juice." Mr. Lloyd George even succeeded in connecting that laissez faire policy with the national interest of Great Britain—as Beaconsfield understood it.

A future historian will be much amused on this occasion to verify the common saying that "the wish is the father of thought." Every kind of argument was used to prove what war-wearied people desired to believe, and nobody seemed to mind the otherwise obvious inconsistency and fallacy of argumentation. It is not my purpose here to discuss it. But this book may help some future analyst to inquire into the origin of common error. It is important to state that this origin, without people always knowing it, is the

Bolshevist propaganda. There exists no other way but this to trace common blunders in framing the "Russian policy" to its origin, and even to understand at all the real meaning of these obvious blunders. The only possible sense of the "non-intervention" policy was and still is that which pro-Bolshevist extremists of all countries imply in it, namely, to save "the Russian (Communist) Revolution and the Soviet Republics." Only such people may claim to be consistent in urging that policy, as realize that this and nothing else is its real aim and its possible result.

However weakened the international danger of Bolshevism may be, the practical interest of this book will still consist in stating, in an objective way, the component elements of the pro-Bolshevist political psychology. Bolshevism may—or may not—be stifled for the moment. It will hardly disappear at all. To recollect and to keep present in mind its origin and its development means to be able to recognize it at its single symptoms, and thus to prevent its resurrection

EPILOGUE

A NEW chapter seems to be opening in the history of revolutionary Internationalism. When I was finishing the book, in November 1919, the prospects of Bolshevism were rather gloomy. Moscow, the centre and the source of the world propaganda, was within the reach of Denikin's armies. The United States has decided to break with the policy of toleration towards the criminal propaganda of open revolt against the State and its institutions. Attempts at open Bolshevist demonstrations on an international scale had failed, and the very intractability of revolutionary Extremism seemed to alienate the sympathies of labouring masses. General Elections in France had shown that these masses did not lack the sense of patriotism and solidarity roused by the great exertion of the War.

Since then a change has come owing to two principal events: One is the military defeat of the centres of Russian national resistance to Bolshevism; another is the triumph of the "Hands-off-Russia" policy, preached by the Bolshevist supporters and now accepted by the Allied Governments, especially by that in this country. Both events are closely interwoven. The result of both now is that a new wave of Bolshevism is rising and sweeping over Europe. The visible sign of the growing tide is the progress in Europe of the Third International, the Bolshevist chief engine of propaganda.

Says Mr. Lincoln Eyre, a special correspondent of the

New York World, in his recent article (see the Daily News, February 26th): "In the seven weeks I spent in Moscow three (Communist) delegates arrived from the United States, and literally scores from Germany, Hungary, Austria, Switzerland, Scandinavia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Italy, China, Japan, Corea, India, Afghanistan and the countries of Asia Minor. The only important states from which few Communistic envoys come are Great Britain and France. Practically all these missionaries are obliged to travel illegally, i.e. with false passports or without any. They slip across the fighting front that encircles the Soviet Republic in most astonishing ways, risking death from all forms of hardship to reach Moscow. The one-time seat of Moscovy's Emperors has become to Communists of the world over what Mecca is to the Mohammedan pilgrims."

Nowadays, thanks to Mr. Lloyd George's policy adopted by the Allies, communication with the Communist Mecca has become much more comfortable. The "ring of fire" or "barbed wire" no longer exists. Newspapers are full of correspondents' articles from Red Russia, singing the praises of Lenin, Trotsky and Zinoviev. The Bolshevist prison has taught even Mr. Keeling to appreciate the power of Communism, and—if we are to believe Mr. Lansbury—he has made amends. Before this book is published swarms of propagandists from Bolshevist Russia, disguised as negotiators, cooperators or traders, are likely to invade Europe.

No wonder European Bolshevists also have grown self-confident. They wear no disguise in preaching their Bible. The Third International has held its new conference in Amsterdam, in the beginning of February. It was decided that "a revolutionary action of the

In order to achieve this the Third International is at pains to keep clear from every compromise with the "reformists" or even with the "centrists." What are the latter doing? Well, as usual they are busy negotiating with the Extremists to preserve the "unity" of the Party. The difference is only that Longuet is now playing as regards Lenin the part which Renaudel had been playing in regard to Longuet. Thus in the process of drifting to the Left a new stage is being reached, which is very vividly reflected in the discussions of the national congress in Strassburg at the end of February. The resolution to leave the Second Inter-

Rumanian Socialist parties and fractions of parties in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Bulgaria, Hungary, United States and Great Britain.

The last and the most important one, as this book goes to press (March 19th), is an unsuccessful attempt at a military counter-revolution in Berlin. Far from preventing the Bolshevist "danger from the East," its result was to set free the forces of Spartacism. Roughly speaking, the German Kornilov and the German Kerensky both repeated the mistakes of their Russian predecessors; the former by trying a desperate stroke to give Germany a strong Government, the latter by refusing to come to terms with patriotic rebels. In Germany, as well as in Russia, the result is the same: the door open to the common enemy—Bolshevism.