Page:Georgy Vasilyevich Chicherin - Two Years of Foreign Policy (1920).pdf/26

 Bulgaria left the coalition, and the panicky tone of the German press pointed clearly to the approaching complete military collapse of Germany. On October 3 the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, in reply to the letter from Comrade Lenin, made the epoch-making declaration which stirred the whole world. In view of the expected attack of Anglo-French imperialism on the German working class after its liberation, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee promised its assistance to the latter. We no longer took into account German imperialism, since its collapse was but a question of days. The policy of mutual aid of the revolutionary workers' states against the attack on them by foreign imperialism has thus been given official international expression. On the next day, October 4, the Government of Maximilian of Baden was formed in Germany, with Scheidemann as a member, and on the same day Germany informed the United States that she was ready to conclude peace on the basis of President Wilson's 14 points. During October the Russo-German Boundary and Evacuation Commissions peacefully continued their work; and the Marine Commission had already met, taking up the questions regarding the reciprocal return of the seized vessels, and regarding the realization of the decisions of August 27 to allow us free transit and access to the Baltic Sea, But the rising revolutionary wave in Germany gradually forced the technical diplomatic work into the background. Three days before the German revolution and the abdication of the Kaiser, on November 5, and after the vaudeville incident with our trunk, which quite opportunely broke at the Berlin railway station and in which were found leaflets that we had never put there, all our representatives and all commissions were sent out of Germany on the ground of our alleged violation of the second article of the Brest Treaty, and all the German representatives and commissions were recalled from Russia.

This was followed by a prolonged and complex procedure of mutual exchange and evacuation from