Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/472

 of production created by the masses of the people to export products and capital to foreign countries in order to reap super-profits in return for the benefits forced on them, their struggle for spoils resulting in imperialistic wars. We propose, therefore, Mr. President, that the League of Nations be based on the expropriation of the capitalists of all countries. In your country, Mr. President, the banks and the industries are in the hands of such a small group of capitalists that, as your personal friend, Colonel Robins, assured us, the arrest of twenty heads of capitalistic cliques and the transfer of the control, which by characteristic capitalistic methods they have come to possess, into the hands of the masses of the world is all that would be required to destroy the principal source of new wars. If you will agree to this, Mr. President—if the sources of future wars will thus be destroyed, then there can be no doubt that it would be easy to remove all economic barriers and that all peoples, controlling their means of production, will be vitally interested in exchanging the things they do not need for the things they need. It will the be a question of an exchange of products between nations, each of which produces what it can best produce, and the League of Nations will be a league of mutual aid of the toiling masses. It will then be easy to reduce the armed forces to the limit necessary for the maintenance of internal safety.

We know very well that the selfish capitalist class will attempt to create this internal menace, just as the Russian landlords and capitalists are now attempting, with the aid of American, English and French armed forces, to take the factories from the workers and the land from the peasants. But, if the American workers, inspired by your idea of a League of Nations, will crush the resistance of the American capitalists as we have crushed the resistance of the Russian capitalists, then neither the German nor any other capitalists will be a serious menace to the victorious working class, and it will then suffice, if every member of the commonwealth, working six hours in the factory, spends two hours daily for several months in learning the use of arms, so that the whole people will know how to overcome the internal menace.

And so, Mr. President, though we have had experience with your promises, we nevertheless accept as a basis your proposals about peace and about a League of Nations. We have tried to develop them in order to avoid results which would contradict your promises, as was the case with your promise of assistance to Russia. We have tried to formulate with precision your proposals on the League of Nations in order that the League of Nations should not turn out to be a league of capitalists against the nations. Should you not agree with us, we have no objection to an "open discussion of your peace terms," as the first point of your peace program demands. If you will accept our proposals as a basis, we will easily agree on the details.

But there is another possibility. We have had dealings with the president of the Archangel attack and the Siberian invasion, and we have also had dealings with the president of the League of Nations Peace Program. Is not the first of these—the real president—actually directing the policies of the American capitalist Government? Is not the American Government rather a government of the American corporations, of the