Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/389

 supervision and control of the production and distribution of products,—such is the path to power, whether it be power in the military sense or power in the Socialist sense.

It is unbecoming in a Socialist, when he has suffered a defeat, to protest his victory loudly or to droop into despair. It is not true that we have no other alternative than that between an "inglorious" death, which is what this terrible peace amounts to, and a "heroic" death in a hopeless war. It is not true that we have betrayed our ideals by signing this "Peace of Tilsit" We have betrayed nothing and no one, we have neither sanctioned nor conceded a single falsehood; to no single friend and companion in misfortune have we refused all the aid in our power. A commander-in-chief, who withdraws the remains of his army, defeated and afflicted with a panic flight, into the interior of the country, who defends this withdrawal in a case of extremity, with an intolerable and humiliating peace, is not perpetrating treason against those sections of the army which he can no longer assist and which have been cut off by the enemy. Such a commander is doing his duty when he chooses the only way that is open for saving what can still be saved, consenting to no gambles, disguising no sad truths in the eyes of the people, "giving up territory in order to gain time," utilizing every breathing-spell, no matter how short, in order to collect his forces, in order to provide repose and healing for his army, which has become sick with disintegration and demoralization.

We have signed a "Peace of Tilsit." When Napoleon I forced Prussia in 1807 to make such a peace, he destroyed all the German armies, occupied the capital and all the large cities, introduced his police system, compelled the vanquished to provide an auxiliary army for new wars of conquest waged by the victor, dismembered Germany, and concluded with certain German states alliances against other German states. Yet, in spite of this severe peace, the German people succeeded in maintaining themselves, in gathering their forces, and in attaining for themselves the rights of freedom and independence. To all those who are willing and able to think, the example of the Peace of Tilsit—which was only one of the many oppressive and humiliating treaties forced upon the Germans at that time—shows clearly how childishly naive is the thought that under all circumstances a most cruel peace is the depth of degradation, while war is the path of heroism and salvation. Warlike eras have frequently shown that peace may often discharge the function of a breathing-spell for the gathering of forces for new battles. The Peace of Tilsit was the greatest humiliation of Germany, and, at the