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 „There is some truth in all slander“. During the last-few weeks preceeding the signing of the Brest-treaty, I lived in a state of mental enervation produced by this idea which daily became more and more fixed by the conversations I heard, the articles I read and the documents, invented or „inspired“ and so cleverly used,—by those anxiously waiting for the finishing stroke that Germany would not hesitate to deal,—and by the insupportable echo of triumphant joy that the majority of the Russian bourgeoisie manifested at the news that the Germans were advancing upon Petrograd, and in the direction of Moscow. In the meantime I had the misfortune to learn of the quite unexpected departure of our Embassy for Finland, that is to say, away from Russia, at a moment when, confronted by menacing peril, we ought, more than ever, to have remained to give to the poor Russian people, at least the moral support of our presence, and to signify in some tangible way our protest against the infamous appetites which German Imperialism had just cynically revealed.

Sad beyond expression, profoundly disappointed, I experienced at that moment something more than a feeling of indignation. I felt an insuperable disgust for everything that surrounded me. Ail my hopes in what for me was still „the resurrection of the revolution“, that is to say, the return to power of a Kerensky Government, had been cruelly frustrated. The lamentable downfall of the Constituent Assembly from which I had expected so much, the timidity of the popular indignation, and of the opposition parties, about which I had been so sure, as