Page:The New Europe - Volume 3.djvu/195

 remarkable publication, “.” If they do, they will have read in that publication an interview with Mr. Venizelos published four weeks ago, in which he made the most bitter complaint that he, being a friend of the Allied Governments, and having risked his whole life and his whole political position to serve you, was refused permission to rally his friends and extend his Government and control—although he is doing it to back up the Allies, and although his followers—these are his own words—in Athens and Thessaly were at the mercy of bitter enemies, some had been murdered, and some had been hunted down and ill-treated in every way—simply at the order of the Allies. Mystery of the darkest kind has hung over this matter for the past year. No one can tell who is maintaining this German Court party. If we ask the question the Government say it is a matter concerned with our Allies; but a friend of mine the other day gave me a bundle of extracts from the Temps and other leading newspapers of Paris, in which this paper declared that something must be done to support Mr. Venizelos.” And we may add that most disquieting information is now reaching us regarding the attitude of the British Legation in Athens in this very respect.

The Berner Tagwacht of 23 April publishes an article by Mr. Bezrabotnia, editor of a Russian revolutionary paper in Paris which the French Government has suspended, revealing something of the arrangements by which Lenin and his friends succeeded in passing through Germany on their way to Russia:—“Already in the first days after the proclamation of the political amnesty in Russia the Russian refugees in Switzerland, Britain, and France had to contend not only against the Consular agents of the old régime, but also with the secret opposition of the French and British Governments, which designated them “Russian pacifists.” Every difficulty is being put in the way of the Kientalers (i.e., Zimmerwaldians) while Plekhanov, the agent of the Russian bourgeoisie, is allowed to return to Russia as a Minister, accompanied by the mandatories of the British and French bourgeoisies. Full of indignation at these circumstances, the Swiss Social Democrats approached the German authorities with a view to securing their passage through Germany in exchange for German civilian prisoners in Russia. These steps were successful, all the more so as the Russian Government, at the invitation of the Council of Workmen’s Delegates, released the German prisoners and allowed them to return home. The only condition made by the German Government was that the refugees should travel in sealed coaches with the windows hermetically closed. A statement signed by their associates in Switzerland is published in the Berner Tagwacht of the same date as a counterblast to “tendencious and lying reports and articles” in the Entente Press, in which these Russians are represented as agents of imperialistic Germany. The signatories state that they are perfectly well aware that the German Government is only permitting the transit of these persons because it believes that their