Page:Lenin's Speech at the First Session of the Second Congress of the Third International (1920).djvu/13

 blished, even the most violent opponents of bolshevism had to repudiate it. For by that document an insignificant group consisting of the richest nations, the „Big Four“—Clemenceau, Lloyd George, Orlando and Wilson—was set up to establish new world relations, when the machine was set going it led to complete bankruptcy. This is evident from the wars against Russia. She, a weak, ruined exhausted country, the most backward of all countries against the union of rich and powerful goverments dominating over the whole world, has come out victorious. We could not oppose a power anywhere equal to theirs, and still we proved victorious. Why? Because there was not even a shade of unity among them, because one power was acting in opposition to the other. France wanted that Russia should pay her debts and should serve as a menacing force against Germany: England wanted to divide Russia. England attempted to seize the Baku petroleum and to conclude treaties with Russia's neighbours. Among the English official documents there are records figuring out with unusual carefulness all the governments (there were about 14 of them) which promised in December 1919 to capture Moscow and Petrograd.

On these governments England based her policy, to these Governments England loaned millions and millions. But all these calculations went to pieces and all the loans exploded. Such is the condition created by the League of Nations. This League of Nations agreement furnishes the best agitation for bolshevism every day of its existence, for the mighty adherents of capitalist „order“ show how they put stumbling blocks in each other's way upon every question. Japan, England, America and France are engaged in a mad fight over the division of Turkey, Russia, Mesopotamia and China. The bourgeois press in these countries is replete with the maddest attacks, the most bitter harangues against their „colleagues“ for grabbing the prey from under one's nose.

Thus, we witness a complete collapse among the upper layer, among the few richest countries. It is impossible for a billion and a quarter of people making up seventy percent of the population of the earth to live in such a way as is wanted by the domineering „advanced and civilised“ capitalism. One small clique of the richest countries, namely, England, America and Japan, which had the possibility of plundering the Eastern Asiatic countries, but had no independent financial and military power without the support of the remaining