Page:Lenin's Speech at the First Session of the Second Congress of the Third International (1920).djvu/12

 from among all the somewhat intelligent men, were compelled to follow the course taken by Keynes. He handed in his resignation and threw into the face of his government a book which nails it to a post. Keynes' case shows what is going on and what will go in the consciences of hundreds of thousands of men, when they will have understood that all that talk about „war for freedom“ etc. was nothing but mere deception; that the result of the war was the enrichment of an inconsiderable number of people, while all the rest were impovershed.

The bourgeois Keynes says that the English people in order to save themselves and to save England's economy must insist upon the renewal of free commercial relations between Germany and Russia. But how is this to be brought about? By means of annulling all debts, as Keynes proposes! This is the opinion not alone of the learned economist Keynes. Millions of people are coming and will come to this idea. Millions of people hear the bourgeois economist say that there is no other way out but to annul the debts and therefore „curse the bolsheviks“ (who annulled the debts) and let us resort the „magnanimity“ of America I am of the opinion, that such an economist-agitator for bolshevism should be handed a thanksgiving address by the Congress of the Communist International.

If on the one hand the economic conditions of the masses have become unbearable, and on the other hand, increasing disintegration has set in among the insignificant minority of the all powerful victorious countries as illustrated by Keynes, then we have before us the ripening of both conditions making for the world revolution.

We now have before us a somewhat more definite picture of the entire world. We know now what it means to have a billion and a quarter of people depending upon a handful of rich men and put under conditions making life impossible for them. When the constitution of the League of Nations was presented to the people and it had been declared that the league had put an end to the war and would henceforth allow no one to violate the peace, and when that document had been put into effect it appeared as if it were the greatest victory we have won. Before the constitution of the League of Nations had been put into effect it was said that Germany must be put under a special regime, but when the document was adopted everything would be all right. But as soon as the constitution of the League of Nations was pu-