secure the control of all the Baltic provinces of Russia right up to the Gulf of Finland. Lithuania and Courland with the cities of Riga and Vilna were to be abandoned to Germany outright. The Central Powers would determine the fate of the great territories involved. Further, Germany was to occupy Livonia and Esthonia beyond the line defined, with a police force "until security is insured by proper national institutions, and until public order is established." From a territorial point of view the terms were catastrophic. Of her Baltic coastline Russia would retain only the base of the Gulf of Finland with her European eye Petrograd, and that practically on the frontier of a hostile and independent Finland. Trotsky, the head of the Russian peace delegation, at first refused to agree to the treaty, and announced that Russia, having failed to secure a general peace in which her former allies participated, would not accept the terms proposed by the Germans, but would nevertheless discontinue the war. He fell back upon the now famous formula "No peace, no war.' The reply of Germany was a general advance which demonstrated at once that the Russian army was incapable of resistance (being then engaged in demobilizing itself at the rate of hundreds of thousands of men a day) and that Petrograd could be had for the marching. A strong party among the Bolsheviks was for resistance to the iniquitous imperialism of Germany-resistance to the death. Let the republic go down fighting to the death against the " vultures." This mood was strongly held by the Petrograd workmen. They regarded the Revolution as their work-they had saved it from Kornilov, they had won the battle against the Provisional Government. If the peasants were thinking only of peace and the land, the workers were ready to die for the Revolution. Such was their mood. The question of peace or war was debated in the Soviet at the Smolny Institute. The discussion took place amid a furious pandemonium of indignation against the Germans. In the opinion of Mr Bruce Lockhart had a vote been taken at Smolny before the arrival of Lenin, it would have been decisive for the resumption of war against the Germans.2 The intervention of Lenin was decisive. Magnificently ironical, he asked them what particular good they would be doing by 1 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, art. vi. 2 R. H. Bruce Lockhart, "Lenin: The Man and his Achievement," Edinburgh Review, March 1924. throwing themselves under the German Juggernaut. Were Petrograd to fall, the Revolution would probably be extinguished. After all, the peace was but a "breathing space," at all costs the Revolution must be kept alive. What possibility of resistance was there, since, in spite of the eloquent speeches at Smolny, the Russian army would not fight. The Russian army will never fight again until it is reorganized into a new revolutionary army.' The doctrine of the "breathing space" but half-convinced the Assembly. But already Karl Radek had hit upon the same idea when he shouted at General Hoffman : "The Allies will give you a Brest-Litovsk!" The decision to sign the treaty was taken, but the ratification was left to the decision of an all-Russian Congress of Soviets. Lenin insisted on Moscow as the place of meeting. He had begun to win, but he had to work slowly. For the debate at Smolny he had characteristically prepared twenty-one theses in favour of the view that Russia would have to sign the peace. But he did not use his final arguments against Trotsky, who was convinced that the Berlin proletariat would rise against its taskmasters. For Trotsky he reserved the barbed remark, "We must not be intoxicated with the revolutionary phrase,' but otherwise let him have his own way so far as talking went. “I am willing to let Trotsky see if he can put off the peace," he observed to Colonel Robins; "I am willing to let him see if he can save us from it. I would rejoice if he could. But I wanted the comrades to know what I am thinking. I wanted them to know it, so that they can remember it a few days from now." It was evident Russia could not resist, but for all that Lenin's unpopularity_deepened. But he pushed on. At a Soviet meeting Karl Radek rose in his place, stared at Lenin and said: "If there were five hundred courageous men in Petrograd we would put you in prison!" Lenin replied gently, "Some people, indeed, may go to prison; but if you will calculate the probabilities you will see that it is much more likely that I will send you than you me." 2 But the workers remained. Their fury at the decision to sign the treaty culminated in an immense mass demonstration against the Smolny Institute. So dangerous did the situation become that the commandant hurried to Lenin who was working in his little room, apparently oblivious of everything 1 Hard," Raymond Robins' Own Story," p. 94. 2 Ibid. except his papers, and demanded an order to fire on the mob. "Shoot them?" cried Lenin, "we will talk to them. Tell their leaders to come in." They arrived grimly carrying their bayonetted rifles. Rumours had stirred among them that Lenin had fled that day to Finland. He walked towards them, "Comrades," he said, " you see I have not run away. Comrades, I was fighting for the Revolution before some of you were born, I shall be fighting for the Revolution when some of you are dead. I stand always in danger. You stand in more danger. Let us talk frankly. Comrades, I do not blame you for not always trusting your leaders. There are so many voices in Russia to-day! I wonder that you have trusted us as much as you have. Among honest revolutionaries there are two voices. One of them is right. One is wrong. "Many comrades say: You must go to the front and fight the Germans and die fighting. You must die fighting for the Revolution.' They do not pretend, these comrades, that you are willing to fight for anything except the Revolution. But they say, and they say truly, that the Germans are against the Revolution, and so they say: 'Go and fight the Germans.' I do not say so. I say: You are the new army. You are the only army of the Revolution. You are the beginning of it. What will happen if you fight the Germans? The old army is not fighting. It cannot fight. It is exhausted. Only you, with the Revolution in you, want to fight. You know what will happen. You will fight. You will die. And the soldiers of the Revolution will be dead, and the Czar will come back. Would that be dying for the Revolution? Comrades, when we die, let us die really for the Revolution. Let us die when, by dying, we can win victory for the Revolution. Comrades, my voice is right. They tell you I will make a shameful peace. They tell you I will surrender Petrograd the Imperial City. Yes, I will surrender Petrograd the Imperial City. They tell you I will surrender Moscow the Holy City. I will. I will go back to the Volga, and I will go back behind the Volga to Ekaterinburg; but I will save the soldiers of the Revolution, and I will save the Revolution. "Comrades what is your will-? "I will give you now a special train to the front. I will not stop you. You may go. But you will take my resignation with you. I have led the Revolution. I will not share in the murder of my own child. Comrades what is your will-? "Lenin! Lenin! Lenin! The room held no other sound. It was a judgment delivered. Having heard it, the judges picked up their rifles and marched out of the room and down the corridor still delivering their judgment. "Comrade Lenin." Such was Lenin face to face with his followers. Such was Lenin the personal leader.1 The picture is an unforgettable one. As a supreme concession to Trotsky and the war party, Lenin approached the representatives of the Allies through Colonel Robins, and asked them to submit certain questions to their governments. He embodied his questions in a formal document. Colonel Robins asked him whether, if the document were answered affirmatively by the government of U.S.A. he would oppose the ratification of the Peace of Brest-Litovsk at the All-Russian Congress of Soviets that was to meet at Moscow on 12th March. Lenin gave him a formal undertaking to do so. The following are some extracts from this vital document: "In case the Russian Congress of Soviets will refuse to ratify the peace treaty with Germany. it is very important for the military and political plans of the Soviet Power for replies to be given to the following questions: "(1) Can the Soviet Government rely on the support of the United States of North America, Great Britain, and France in its struggle against Germany? "(2) What kind of support could be furnished in the nearest future and on what conditions-military equipment, transportation, supplies, living necessities? (3) What kind of support would be furnished particularly and specially by the United States? Should Japan attempt to seize Vladivostok and the Eastern Siberian Railway which... would greatly impede the concentration of Soviet troops towards the East about the Urals-in such case what steps would be taken by the other Allies, particularly and especially by the United States, to prevent a Japanese landing on our Far East, and to insure uninterrupted communications with Russia through the Siberian route? "All these questions are conditioned with the self-understood assumption that the internal and foreign policies of the Soviet Government will continue to be directed in accord with the principles of international Socialism and that the Soviet 1 Hard," Raymond Robins' Own Story," pp. 167-170. Government retains its complete independence of all nonSocialist governments." 1 Robins took this statement to the Special Commissioner in Russia for the British Prime Minister, Mr Bruce Lockhart, who at once sent off a long cable on the subject to the Foreign Office, urgently suggesting that the opportunity of an agreement with the Bolsheviks should be seized at once. In the course of the report he wrote: "If H.M.G. does not wish to see Germany paramount in Russia, then I would most earnestly implore you not to neglect this last opportunity. . . . If we accept it, we stand to gain considerably, and in any case we can lose nothing more than we have lost already." "2 ONeither Colonel Robins nor Mr Bruce Lockhart ever received an answer to their cables on this subject to their governments. Meanwhile Lenin, that there might be no doubt, had put off the meeting of the Moscow Congress from 12th March to the 14th. The debate on the Peace began in the Hall of Nobles at the Kremlin on 15th and continued till the evening of 16th March. Most of the delegates were against the Peace. At 11.30 p.m. Lenin waved to Robins to come to speak to him. Robins came. "What have you heard from your Government?" Robins replied "Nothing. . . . What has Lockhart heard from London ?" Nothing," said Lenin. “I shall now speak for the Peace. It will be ratified."3 He spoke for an hour and twenty minutes. The speech has all that hard insistence, all that revelling in the mere grimness of fact so typical of one who never shrank from reality. "We were compelled to sign a Tilsit peace. We must not deceive ourselves. We must have courage to face the unadorned, bitter truth. We must measure in full, to the very bottom, the abyss of defeat, partition, enslavement, humiliation, into which we have been thrown. The clearer we understand this, the firmer, the more hardened and inflexible will become our will for liberation, our desire to arise anew from enslavement to independence, our firm determination to see at all costs that Russia shall cease to be poor and weak, that she may become truly powerful and prosperous. . . . It is unworthy of a true Socialist, if badly defeated, either to deny the fact or to become despondent. It is not true that we have no way out, that we can only choose between a disgraceful" death-from the " 1 Hard, "Raymond Robins' Own Story," pp. 138-9. 2 Ross, |