Page:Georgy Vasilyevich Chicherin - Two Years of Foreign Policy (1920).pdf/31

 in Russia was the Danish Red Cross, which left Russia in the summer of 1919.

During this time we made a large number of peace proposals. Shortly after our note to Pouget of August 5 we took advantage of the departure of the Norwegian representatives from Kiev to make an attempt through them to start oral negotiations with the powers attacking Russia. In the well-known note to President Wilson, of Oct. 24, 1918, containing an exhaustive criticism of the whole American policy toward Soviet Russia, we asked a definite question: Precisely by what means could we buy the cessation of the attacks on us by the Entente Powers? On November 3 the Soviet Government, through all the neutral representatives who were then in Moscow, proposed to the Entente Governments to open peace negotiations. This step was approved by the Sixth All-Russian Congress of Soviets, which on November 8 solemnly addressed to the Entente powers a peace proposal and authorized the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs to take all necessary steps in this direction. Comrade Litvinov, who went to Sweden on a mission from the Soviet Government, on December 23 sent a circular note to the Entente representatives in which he proposed the opening of preliminary negotiations with the view of removing all the causes of conflict. Subsequently he sent a special dispatch to Wilson on the same subject. On January 12, having learned through a radio of the speech by the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at Washington regarding the causes of intervention in Russia, we sent a radio to the American Government, pointing out that all the motives