Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/272

 the burden of repaying it. It might even lead to the risk of her succumbing beneath the burden.

Surely in common justice the author of the ill-doing should repair what wrong he has done, in so far as it is reparable.

On October 4, 1914, the Chancellor admitted in the Reichstag that Germany had violated the neutrality of Belgium, and that she owed her reparation. We are firmly convinced that Russian democracy will not admit less than did the representative of the Kaiser, and will recognize in this matter the obvious rights of an oppressed nation.

According to us, this right implies that nations shall have no foreign rulers, and that they cannot be placed against their will under a selected sovereignty. The principle proclaimed by the Soviet is opposed by its former conception of the territorial statu quo, to which the Holy Alliance had brought its influence to