Page:Lenin's Speech at the First Session of the Second Congress of the Third International (1920).djvu/7

 conclusion that Europe and the whole world with it is, as a consequence of the Versailles peace, approaching bankruptcy. Keynes resigned, threw his book in the face of his government, and said: „You are committing an insane act.“ I shall give you his figures which, in general, reduce themselves to the following.

What are the relative national debts of the chief powers? I express it in gold roubles, taking ten roubles as the equivalent of a pound sterling, and here is what we get: the United States have to their credit nineteen thousand million roubles and no indebtedness to other countries. Before the war, it was in debt to England. Comrade Levy at the last congress of the Communist Party of Germany, held April 14, 1920, justly stated in his report that only two countries remained which stand forth in the world as independent powers, Great Britain and America. Only America appears, in regard to finances, as an absolutely independent country. It was a debtor country before the war, now it is the only creditor. All the other powers of the world are in debt. Great Britain has reached the position in which she has seventeen thousand million roubles to her debit and eight thousand million roubles to her credit. She is already fifty per-cent in debt. Besides, her credit account includes six thousand millions owed to her by Russia. The military supplies which during the war were received by Russia, are reckoned on the credit side of Great Britain. Recently, when comrade Krassin in his Capacity as representative of the Russian Soviet Government had occasion to speak with Lloyd George about an agreement with regard to repayment of loans, he made it strikingly clear to the savants and politicians, to the leaders of the British Government, that, if they expect to collect the debts too, they are greatly mistaken. And this mistake was already revealed by the British diplomat Keynes.

The question is not only, or not at all, that the Russian Government does not wish to pay the debts. No government could pay them, for these debts are the usurers' profits on what has already been paid twenty times. The same bourgeois Keynes, who has no sympathy whatever for the revolutionary movement, says: „It is self understood that these debts cannot be paid.“

Concerning France, Keynes gives the following figures: her credit account equals three and half billions, while her debit account equals ten and a half billions. And this is a country of which the Frenchmen themselves say that she is