344 THE CLASS STRUGGLE EDITORIALS 345 revolutionary conflict of fundamental significance. For neither signing nor refusing to sign could lead the German and the international proletariat out of the desperate situation into which the ruling classes have forced it through the World War. It must prove that the ruling classes are altogether unqualified to really end the war, that is, to again create normal, stable conditions, that only the seizure of political power by the proletariat, the overthrow of the present rulers, and a complete revolutionizing of the entire political and economic system can bring about a real peace between the peoples. Only under these conditions will the hazy words of the Independents about the growing international solidarity of the proletariat gain any significance. It is the growth of the World Revolution upon which the German proletariat must set all its hopes and which it must bring about and hasten through its own revolutionary struggle.
The Communist Party of Germany has, to the extent that the state of siege has not stifled its voice, spoken and acted in this sense. Thus one of the few of its newspapers that have not yet been suppressed, the Chemnitz Kämpfer, wrote at the time of the crisis: The German workers take interest in the business at Weimar; they know that the great problems of the time cannot be solved by mere phrases; they know that Versailles will not mean peace, even after the German Government has signed; they stand apart, coldly and indifferently observing this miserable haggling. With calm eye and determined will they await the moment of the other decision which is now preparing, and they will answer the empty phrase accept or reject with a threatening No! to the world. No! which is not intended to prevent a peace but to hasten the historical derailment and to bring about more quickly the great catastrophe of German capitalism which is now inevitable.
Francis, the American ambassador to Russia, who has returned to the for an extended vacation, whose inefficiency Mr. William Hart so delightfully describes in his Robins interview series in the Metropolitan Magazine, is so emphatic in his opinion that Soviet Russia can be crushed only by a League of Nations. For this reason, he is busily engaged in creating public opinion, by speeches before Manufacturers Associations, Chambers of Commerce and similar bodies in favor of immediate ratification of the Covenant by the Senate.
As abruptly as Hungary became a Soviet Republic, it has returned to the ranks of capitalist nations or rather, has been driven back. We have said before that the leading components of the League of Nations constituted this driving force. The Soviet Government of Hungary again and again declared its readiness to enter upon peace negotiations. Again and again it acceeded to exorbitant territorial demands upon which the Entente had decided. And in spite of an accidental invitation to Bela Kun, the final answer was an uncompromising No. Under no circumstances would the Supreme Council make peace with Soviet Hungary. The gentlemen in Paris, instead of carrying out their promised program of selfdetermination for the small nations, sent the Chechian forces into Hungary. They were sent back with bloody noses. The Roumanian army met with the same success. Whereupon propaganda, so perfidious when used by Bolshevists for their purposes, was tried and proved a failure. Finally desperate measures were employed. Munitions and money were sent to Roumania, and a second attack upon Hungary prepared.
Cut off by blockade on all sides, without food, surrounded by threatening nationalist counter revolutionary governments, hungry for Hungarian territory, the unfortunate Soviet government had to choose between two alternatives, either to die fighting or to resign. To resist the armed forces of the Roumanians was a hopeless undertaking. The Roumanian offensive had cut them off any possibility of Russian help, and the other Socialist and revolutionary groups in Europe were neither strong enough nor determined enough to come to its assistance.
Perhaps it would have been wiser to die fighting. If Bela Kun, who showed himself in the four months of his administration as a man of rare courage and determination, finally submitted to the force of circumstances, it was surely for good and sufficient reasons. And the chief reason was the lack of unity in the Hungarian proletarian government. To The First Victim of the League of Nations Now that the League of Nations has withstood its first task so well, international capital will be even more insistent in demanding its speedy realization. For no other power on earth could have accomplished the fall of Soviet Hungary so easily as the united perfidy of the democratic nations. the restoration of the Habsburg monarchy could never have been so readily been carried out as was possible with the willing assistance of Roumania as enfant terrible. No wonder Mr.