Page:Lenin - The Soviets at Work (1919).pdf/49

Rh the "Tilsit" peace. We have betrayed nothing and nobody, we have not sanctioned or covered any lie, we have not refused to aid any friend and comrade in misfortune in any way we could, or by any means at our disposal.

A commander who leads into the interior the remnants of an army which is defeated or disorganized by a disorderly flight and who, if necessary, protects this retreat by a most humiliating and oppressive peace, is not betraying those parts of the army which he cannot help and which are cut off by the enemy. Such a commander is only doing his duty, he is choosing the only way to save what can still be saved, he is scorning adventures, telling the people the bitter truth, "yielding territory in order to win time," utilizing any, even the shortest respite in order to gather again his forces, and to give the army, which is affected by disintegration and demoralization, a chance to rest and recover.

We have signed a "Tilsit" peace. When Napoleon I forced Prussia in 1807 to accept the Tilsit peace, the conqueror had defeated all the German armies, occupied the capital and all the large cities, established his police, compelled the conquered to give him auxiliary corps in order to wage new wars of plunder by the conquerors, dismembered Germany, forming an alliance with some of the German states against other German states. And nevertheless, even after such a peace the German people were not subdued; they managed to recover, to rise and to win the right to freedom and independence.

To any person able and willing to think, the example of the Tilsit peace (which was only one of the many oppressive and humiliating treaties forced upon the Germans in that epoch) shows clearly how childishly naive is the thought that an oppressive peace is, under all circumstances, ruinous, and war the road of valor and salvation. The war epochs teach us that peace has in many cases in history