Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/264

 brothers taking their part, in our country, in the pillage and massacre, in the aggression and insult of our most cherished feelings, mocking at the credulity of internationalists who counted on their aid, we would not, all the same, for that reason hate the German people.

We ask no revenge against them, we do not wish, when our turn comes, to oppress them, we only wish to deliver them in delivering ourselves, to give them the right to dispose of themselves in the same way even as the Russian Revolution has done for the Russian people.

This right, obviously implying the deliverance from national despotism as from all foreign despotism, all project of dismemberment of Germany or Austria-Hungary, whether that territories really German be joined in spite of the wish of their inhabitants to some foreign Power, or that, on the contrary, existing empires be forced to divide themselves up into independent sovereignties, would find us immovably opposed. And even any economic league against Germany with the aim or the result of preventing the legitimate development of