Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/240

 International necessary and preliminary guarantees. These guarantees do not at present exist. A general Conference where those Socialists who are fighting for the freedom of Europe would have as their judges and arbitrators, among others, Sudekum, David, or Scheidemann, Italian neutralists, or Scandinavian pacifists, Maximalists from Petrograd, or Zimmerwald Extremists, would only give the world a lamentable spectacle of confusion and impotence. In the interests of the International, we could not wish such a thing.

It now only remains for us to conclude.

As we write, the Russian Revolution is passing through a crisis that may well prove fatal.

Riga is taken, Courland is conquered, the lines in the North are broken, and, what 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.