Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/384

 and should guarantee us the outbreak of the revolution in Germany by a fixed time, we might eventually take the matter under consideration. But the German International Socialists not only do not say this to us, but they actually are saying, formally, "Offer as much resistance as you can, but decide on this point in agreement with the interests of the Russian Revolution, for it is impossible at present to make any definite promises with regard to the German Revolution."

12. It is maintained that we had promised to wage revolutionary warfare and that the conclusion of a separate peace was a betrayal of our own promise. This is not true. We spoke of the necessity of preparing and waging revolutionary warfare in the epoch of Imperialism. We said this in contradiction of the theory of abstract pacifism, the total negation of "national defense," in the epoch of Imperialism and we said this in order to resist the merely physical instincts of some of the soldiers; but we have never assumed the obligation of waging a revolutionary war without asking ourselves whether it was possible to wage it at a given moment.

And now it is our duty to prepare the revolutionary war. We are keeping this promise, just as we have kept all promises that circumstances have permitted us to keep: we have published the secret treaties, we have offered a righteous peace to all nations, we have drawn out the peace conference in order to give all the peoples an opportunity to join us. But the question of the present possibility of waging a revolutionary war can be decided only from the standpoint of its material possibility, and from the standpoint of the Russian Revolution that has already begun.

13. Considering the arguments in favor of an immediate revolutionary war, as a whole, it is evident that they constitute a policy that may perhaps be in line with a fine gesture, but they have absolutely no relation with the material and class conditions of the present moment.

14. It is beyond doubt that our army can neither now, nor at any time within the next few weeks or even months, resist or push back the German offensive, in the first place because of the fatigue and exhaustion of most of our soldiers and the total disorganization of the provision supply, in the second place because of the absolute insufficiency of horses which makes defeat for our artillery a certainty, in the third place because it is impossible to defend the Riga coast, thus assuring the enemy of the conquest of the rest of Livland, and facilitating the occupation of Petrograd.

15. Furthermore, there is no doubt that the majority of the peasants in our army would now be in favor of a peace of annexa-