Page:The Third International to the Workers of all Countries Concerning the Polish Question (1920).pdf/4

 throw itself into a battle against the Russian Workers and Peasants Republic? This would indeed be an absurd and suicidal adventure on the part of the Polish Government.

Nevertheless, comrades, let us face the truth boldly,—such an adventure is possible, and it is the duty of the workers of the whole world to do everything to prevent it.

It is the Allies in the first place that are attempting by main force to compell Poland to take this desperate step.

At Versailles they made every endeavour economically and forever to destroy Germany and to split up Central EuropEurope [sic] into small States—to dismember it so that the sharks of international capital may the easier swallow the peoples of Germany, Austria and the BakansBalkans [sic] piece by piece. But the peoples of Europe are neither Hindoos nor Negroes, and knowing this, the knights of French capital tremble with fear before the consequences of their own policy. The French capitalists do not beleivebelieve [sic] that the German people with its neck in the Versailles noose will calmly and patiently bear the yoke of an ignominious slavery. Just us after the defeat of France in 1871 Bismark lived all the time under the fear of the possibility of a Franco-Russian Alliance against Germany, just so the present rulers of France are constantly faced with the threatening vision of the nations of Central Europe rising against them. And more especially do they quail before the idea that the Russian people who had now settled its countless enemies will form a fraternal alliance with the German nation which had also emancipated itself from the yoke of capital and younkerdom and the two will subsequantly afford a powerful susport to the French and the British workers against their exploiters.

The French bourgeoisie has other fears besides, It is in no small degree afraid of a strong «great» landlord, capitalist Russia. Should the Russian reaction, with the aid of the Allies, have succeeded in gaining a victory over Worker Peasant Russia,—it would then, in alliance with the defeteddefeated [sic] imperialist Germany, be compelled to fall upon its saviours for the express purpose of forcing from them a portion of the booty which the capitalists of France, England, of America and Japan have divided amongst thems2Ives. For the only Way in which it were possible for the Russian reaction further to fool the labour and peasant masses is by the glitter of foreign conquest, by a mirage of «Great Russia». This fear, on the