Page:Michael Farbman - Russia & the Struggle for Peace (1918).djvu/162

 150 peace and the revolutionary defence of the country. The two factors are intimately connected with each other, and were of equal value in determining the Russian attitude. Here was a clear-sighted and harmonious policy; it proposed peace to the enemy if they would repudiate conquests; it promised help to the Allies if they would repudiate imperialism. "We are ready to hold out the hand of brotherhood to the peoples of Germany and Austria, if they will compel their rulers to renounce all conquests. But we will fight with our weapons in our hands against the attack of German and Austrian invaders. Thus we shall compel the people of the Austro-German alliance to choose between war and peace.

"We are ready to support by force of arms the peoples of England, France, and Italy, if they compel their Governments to renounce all conquests and are none the less forced to defend themselves against Germany. But we shall energetically protest against the continuation of the war for capitalist interests, whatever the national flag whose protection they enjoy." (Izvestia, No. 29, March 31, 1917.)

The Russian democracy did not merely demand a declaration of Allied War-Aims. They aimed at a formal definite proposal of peace on the basis of no annexations or indemnities and the right of peoples to determine their own destinies. They wanted to force Germany into a position where she had to choose between a just peace and a continuation of the war. The events following the Russian Revolution and the appeal to the peoples of the world were such as to awaken hope. But the scheme of the Soviet was frustrated, and the first hindrance was the opposition of the Russian Imperialists and of the Provisional Government itself.