Page:Georgy Vasilyevich Chicherin - Two Years of Foreign Policy (1920).pdf/20

 in it impossible, and on July 30 they left for Kandalaksha, which had been occupied by the British. On July 31 the English made a landing at Onega, after which they bombarded the approaches to Archangel and occupied the latter on August 5. In the meantime comrade Lenin's statement, made at an executive session, that Great Britain and France were in a state of war with Russia, caused the Entente representatives at Moscow to demand an explanation concerning this statement and ask whether they could any longer remain in Soviet Russia. In a note sent on August 2 to the American Consul Poole, we declared that we deemed it impossible to give a public explanation with regard to a statement that was made at an executive session. In connection with this, we sent on August 5 a note to Poole which forms the first link in the long chain of our peace proposals, pointing out that the invasion of our territory was not caused by any act on our part and that the tolling masses of Russia wanted to live in peace with all peoples and had not declared war against anybody. The note energetically protested against the invasion of our territory without cause and without a declaration of war; against the destruction of the property of the toiling masses of Russia; against the seizure and pillage of our cities and villages and the execution of the local workers who were faithful to the Soviet power. We did not declare war, the note further stated,—but we would reply to these actions by appropriate measures of defense and by resorting to the necessary preventive measures, interning in concentration camps the bourgeois citizens of the countries attacking us; these measures would not be used against workers of these countries, since the workers of all the world were our friends. In view of the fact that the American people, according to the declaration of the American consul, had no desire to attempt to overthrow the Soviet power, we asked him to find out Great Britain's aims in her attack upon us—did the latter aim to destroy the power of the workers and peasants and to bring