Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/210

 visional Government is not an easy one, and that its efforts in prose must not be taken too literally. … The fundamental guarantee that the government gives to the Allies consists in the fact that … the agreement signed at London on September 5, 1914 (pledging no separate peace) is not to be revised. That completely satisfies us for the present."

And us too. As a matter of fact it would be different to utter a more contemptuous judgment on the Tereschenko-Tseretelli "prose" than that published by the official L'Entente, which draws its inspiration from the French Embassy. This estimate, while it is by no means unfriendly to Tereschenko or to those who stand behind him, is positively murderous to the "constructive labors" of Tseretelli, who has so warmly recommended to us the "plain, open language" of this document. "Nothing has been left out," he swears before the Congress, "it will satisfy the conscience of the reddest comrades."

But they are mistaken, these adepts in diplomatic prose: they don't satisfy anybody. Isn't it significant that the facts of actual life should answer the appeals of Kerensky and the remonstrances and threats of Tseretelli with such an awful blow as the revolt of the Black Sea sailors? We had been previously told that there among these sailors was Kerensky's citadel, the home of the "patriotism" that demanded an offensive. The facts once more administered a merciless correction. By adhering to the position of the old imperialistic agreements and obligations in external politics, and, in internal politics, capitulating before the propertied classes, it was impossible to unite the army through a combination of revolutionary enthusiasm and discipline. And Kerdnsky's "big stick" has fortunately thus far been too short.

No, this path, truly, leads nowhere.