Page:René Marchand - Why I Side with the Social Revolution (1920).pdf/75

 of Russia was clearly, from the political point of view of both the French and the Allies, a complete blunder, and, from a more elevated point of view, an injustifiable crime, firstly against the right of peoples to freely dispose of themselves, secondly against the right, not less sacred, of the workers and exploited to free themselves from their exploiters and once for ail enter into free possession of the product of their labour. Nevertheless, the allied intervention was not stopped. It continued implacably in spite of its misfortunes and reverses, without profit either for the Allied people or the cause for which they were fighting in spite of the fact that every day it was more and more losing its raison d'etre even to the most blind. Further, it was continued to the great detriment of the Russian people, for whom, by prolonging the Civil War,—by aggravating the Terror,—white and red,—by increasing the exhaustion from the war,—it became the accursed obstacle to the work of reorganizing (already in itself so difficult) the material life of the country, and the restoration of its plant, transport and its struggle against the food crisis. Alas, it became finally quite clear that the Allied Governments' intervention in Russia had not been dictated by the interests of their people, in order to strike a blow at German Imperialism, but purely with the purpose of satisfying the interest of financial groups, in whose grip they found themselves, and with the purpose of exterminating  i. e. the threat of   no longer a theory but a fact,—to tear it down while there was yet time, before the people of other countries might succeed in understan-