Page:Arthur Ransome - The Truth about Russia.djvu/13

 outstretched in spurious friendship became a grasping claw. The first Russian delegation came home to confer with the Soviet Government as to what was to be done in this new situation, when the peace they had promised their exhausted army, their tortured working classes, seemed to be fading like a mirage. Trotsky at the head of a reinforced delegation went to Brest with one of the most daring plans with which any David has sought to destroy his Goliath.

The absence of the Allies had deprived him of the possibility of exhibiting to the working classes of the world the inability of their present governments to conclude a peace in which should be neither conqueror nor conquered. He now attempted to bring about a revolution in Germany or to obtain such a peace for Russia, by making the German Government itself illustrate in their negotiations with him their utter disregard for the expressed wishes of the German people. He did actually succeed in causing huge strikes both in Austria and in Germany, and it is impossible for anyone to say that he would not have finally succeeded in hitting the Goliath of Force opposed to him fairly between the eyes with this shining pebble of an idea, which was the only weapon at his command, if at the last moment his aim had not been deflected, and the target shifted, by the treachery of the handful of men who in the Ukraine were resisting by every means in their power the natural development of the Soviets. These men, preferring to sell their country to Germany than to lose the reins of government themselves, opened separate negotiations, thereby breaking the unity of the ideal front which Trotsky opposed to the Germans. The Germans saw that with part of that front they could come immediately to terms. Instantly their tone in the negotiations changed. They persuaded their own people that the Russians were themselves to blame for not getting the peace they required, and that a just peace was possible only with the Ukraine. Meanwhile the soldiers and workers of the Ukraine were gradually obtaining complete power over their own country, so that when Germany actually concluded peace with the Ukraine, the so-called government whose signatures were attached to that treacherous agreement was actually in asylum in German headquarters, and unable to return to its own supposed capital except under the protection of German bayonets. The Soviet triumphed in the Ukraine, and declared its solidarity with Russia. The Germans, like the Allies, preferred to recognise the better-dressed persons who were ready to conclude peace with them in the name of a country which had definitely disowned them. From that moment the Brest peace negotiations were doomed to failure. Trotsky made a last desperate appeal to the workers of Germany. He said, "We will not sign your robber's peace, but we demobilise our army and declare that Russia is no longer at war. Will the German people allow you to advance on a defenceless revolution?"

The Germans did advance, not at first in regular regiments, but in small groups of volunteers who had no scruples in the