Page:Lenin - Against the Plague of Nations; An Address to Thinking People on the Polish Question (1920).pdf/7

 guard officer on the attack against Petrograd, in which he tells how the entire affair developed.

"And why? Because their League of Nations is a League merely on paper, while in fact it is only a group of wild beasts fighting each other, not aiding each other. In reality they are even now boasting that Latvia, Roumania, and Finland will join Poland in her offensive. But we are convinced that the threats of Finland, Roumania and Latvia, these dependencies of the allies, will come to naught.

"Poland concluded an agreement only with Petlura, this general without an army, and this agreement provoked a great bitterness among the population of Ukraine. Instead of a common offensive they started a sporadic action.

"Our cavalry took Zhitomiyr and the last road connecting Kief with the Polish front in the south and in the north has been already cut, hence Kiev is hopelessly lost for the Poles. We have been advised that the government of Skulski is already tottering, and is ready to offer us new peace terms.

"In spite of our successes we have to strain all our efforts: The most dangerous course is to underestimate the enemy and to believe that we are stronger. Not only is it important to begin, it is also important to persevere and withstand, and this our brothers, the Russians, do not know. Only through long training and through disciplined proletarian struggle against all confusion and wavering can the toiling masses be brought to cast off this bad Russian habit.

"We defeated Kolchak, Denikin and Yudenitch. But we did not know how to destroy them completely and we left Wrangel in the Crimea who is receiving aid from Great Britain and recently landed troops and took Melitopol. To be sure, the latest dispatches say that we retook it.

"We have to wage a most ruthless warfare against desertion, which causes destruction of tens of thousands of our best red guards and peasants and the prolongation of all the tortures of starvation. Our watchword should be to do away with every kind of laxity. Once war has become inevitable everything has to be sacrificed for it! Without this we shall not subdue the Polish nobility and bourgeoisie in order to end war once for all, and to teach this last of our neighboring powers which is still daring to play with us. We have to make them unlearn it so that they should beseech their children, their grandchildren and their grandchildren's children never to attempt it again (applause).

"Therefore, comrades, the first duty of all workers in the villages, of propagandists and agitators is to remember first of all and to propogate first of all the watchword "All for the war". Before the war is concluded with a complete victory we have to safeguard ourselves against any errors and vagaries. The first order of business of every meeting should be the question: Have we done everything, have we made all sacrifices to end the war? This is the question of saving the