Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/348

 The success of the Soviet peace policy did not depend alone upon the response of the German proletariat, but of all the belligerent proletariat, an international response. The Soviet's appeal to the Entente proletariat may be characterized by the following quotation from a declaration to British Labor issued by Maxim Litvinoff, Soviet Ambassador to Great Britain:

"Our revolutionary propaganda among the German soldiers on the western front and among the prisoners of war is undermining the strength of German autocracy and militarism more effectively than military victories could, and has already provoked a strong peace movement in Germany and Austria. But these endeavors meet with opposition not only from the capitalists in Russia, but from capitalists all the world over. The Russian Revolution, with its dash and vigor, has become the focus of the hatred of international Capitalism, and now the prolongation of the war, in addition to its former imperialistic aims, has another aim—to crush the Soviets and the Revolution.

"Realize this! The further prolongation of the war must lead to the defeat of the Russian Revolution and to the triumph of militarism and reaction everywhere. An immediate, just, democratic peace on its principle of no annexations, no indemnities, will spell the downfall of militarism in all countries. This peace can be achieved if only labor will speak in full voice and act with all its might. Workers of Britain, peace is in the balance! The Russian workers appeal to you to join them in their efforts to turn the scale. Labor—speak!"

But British labor did not speak. Socialism in Italy made a moral response, Deputy Morgari declaring in the Chamber that Italian Socialists favored an immediate general peace not only on the Bolshevist terms, but by Bolshevist methods. The French Soicalists responded by ignoring the determined efforts of the Soviets for a general peace and covertly hurling slanders at the Bolsheviki. The Socialist group in the Chamber of Deputies issued a resolution addressed to the Russian Socialists, bearing twenty-eight signatures, among them Albert Thomas, Jules Guesde, Jean Longuet, Marcel Cachin, Compere-Morel and Sembat, from "which we quote:

"To-day it is with deep pain that we have seen some of you enter upon pour-parlers which may lead to a separate peace. Such a consummation would not only permit the Central Empires to prepare for, or to actually achieve, a military victory and finally to dictate their conditions in the name of force, it would even serve—it already serves—the machinations of all the enemies of democracy and Socialism in the world by permitting them to invoke the Russian Revolution as an example of disintegration and of demoralization.

"Has not Germany, followed by her allies, until now declined to make known her war aims? There is in war a terrible logic. The Soviets realize