Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/465

 doomed millions of human beings to death by starvation by cutting off their food supply in direct contradiction to the tenets of international law, that the belligerent party hopes to force the other, by starving its children, to surrender to the victor? Do they know that the belligerent powers have imprisoned hundreds of thousands of unarmed, peaceable citizens in the enemy's country, sending them to places far from home into involuntary servitude, depriving them of every right of self-defense? Do they know that in all belligerent nations the ruling capitalist clique has deprived the masses of the right of free press and assemblage and the right to strike? That workingmen are being imprisoned for every attempt to protest against the White Terror of the bourgeoisie, that they are sent to the front that every last thought of human rights may be killed within them?

All of these instances of the destructive force that is being directed against the working-class in the name of capitalist interests, all these pictures of the White Terror of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat are more than familiar to the neutral nations and their representatives in Russia. Nevertheless, either they forgot their high ideals of humanity or they forgot in these cases to remind the blood-dripping belligerent cations of their misdeeds.

The so-called neutral nations did not dare to utter a word of protest against the White Terror of the capitalist class, nay, more, they did not wish to protest, for the bourgeoisie in all neutral nations have helped the capitalist powers of the capitalist nations to carry on the war because they are earning billions in war contracts with the belligerent nations.

We beg leave to ask another question. Have the gentlemen representing the neutral powers heard of the crushing of the Sinn Feiners in Dublin, of the shooting to death, without due process of the law, of hundreds of Irishmen, with Skeffington at their head? Have they heard of the White Terror in Finland, of the tens of thousands of dead, of the tens of thousands of men and women who are languishing in jail, against whom no charges have ever been, or ever will be made? Have they never heard of the mass murder of workmen and peasants in the Ukraine? Of the mass murder of workmen by the brave Czecho-Slovaks, these hirelings of French capital? The governments of the neutral nations have heard of all these things, but never before did it occur to them to protest against the despotism of the bourgeoisie when it oppresses the working class movement. For they themselves are ready, at any moment, to shoot down workingmen who fight for their rights. In their own countries they stand ready, in the name of the bourgeoisie, and in defense of its interests, to crush out every vestige of working-class uprising.

It is sufficient to recall that labor demonstrations were recently routed by military force in Denmark, Norway, Holland, Switzerland, etc. The workers of Switzerland, Holland and Denmark have not yet revolted, but already the governments of these countries are mobilizing their military forces against the weakest protest of the working-class. When the representatives of the neutral nations threaten us with the indignation of the entire civilized world, and protest against the Red Terror in the