Page:René Marchand - Why I Side with the Social Revolution (1920).pdf/33

 well as the complete docility, and apparent resignation, with which revolutionary elements had finally accepted the „quarter of an hour's respite“ accorded by the Treaty of Brest,—all contributed to justify and foster my complete discouragement. The words of the Roumanian minister, M. Diamandy, were involuntarily recalled to my mind:

„History will show that this revolution had about it something of unprecendented cowardice, the abdication of an entire people who, through fear, voluntarily chooses the betrayal of its allies and its unconditional surrender to the enemy…“ And I asked myself wheterwhether [sic] these words were not going to be realized by actual facts. Could it be really possible? Was it indeed possible that a mere clique of German agents could stifle Russia and the Russian people for ever?

No, I refused to believe it, and meanwhile I suffered silently and deeply from the sarcasm and contempt which it was the custom „amongst honest respectable people“, to heap upon everything that was Russian, without either distinction of class or of social condition. Ah! If then I had only been able to see the truth, to understand the meaning of Bolshevism, to penetrate into the ardent sincerity of Volodarsky's and Solz's declarations, freed from all prejudice, and caring nothing for infamous calumnies, I should then have been able to give myself up to an objective and impartial study of men and things, to learn the meaning of Trotzky's repeated appeals to the Allies, his despair when, abandoned on all sides, meanly sacrificed to the considerations and interests of  he was obliged, sick at heart, after his