DemocracyRussian RevolutionWorking Class

70 THE CLASS STRUGGLE ARMISTICE ON ALL FRONTS 71 nations. But the Entente refused all participation in the proposed conference and Russia was placed before the alternative to negotiate with the imperialists of the Entente on plans for further warfare, or to negotiate with the imperialists of the central powers for peace. They chose the latter; there was no other possible choice.
Recent events in Germany and in Austria show how correctly our Russian comrades had diagnosed the situation. In both of these countries a movement has set in that began, just as did the Russian Revolution in 1917, with the cry Peace and Bread, and will end ultimately, as did the other, in a reconstruction of the whole social fabric of both nations. As yet the dimensions to which this revolutionary movement of the people has grown cannot be adequately measured, nor to what lengths the movement that began with mass meetings against and in spite of police prohibition, that has already passed the stage of political general strikes, will go. But this much seems certain the unrest in Germany will not subside until the government has submitted to the chief demands of the people and has shown its good intentions by seriously negotiating for a peace without annexation and without indemnities. In Germany and Austria the spell is broken!
The time has come when the people of the other nations must act. Either war will kill the revolution, or revolution will kill the war! These words were spoken by a Russian Zimmerwaldist a few days before the Russian Revolution.
Shall it be said to the shame of the workers of the West European nations, shall it be admitted for a moment that the English, the French, the Italian masses and the people of the other belligerent countries will be content to play the role of a mere passive onlooker, after the workers of the Central Powers have so plainly shown that they are awakening? World imperialism cannot be crushed by a single people. Its overthrow must be accomplished by the united action of the world proletariat.
It has been generally accepted unconsciously even by the capitalistic world, that peace will and must be brought by the action of the proletariat. But a peace according to the Russian formula, a peace without annexations and without indemnities, can be brought about only by the general armistice that has been demanded by the Russian government.
Germany and Austria agreed to the armistice for a variety of reasons: they were afraid of their peoples, and they hoped, furthermore, to be able to use an armistice on the Eastern front for their own dark purposes in the West. But they overlooked that every immediate benefit they might derive through the shifting of troops was outweighed by the fact that they were forced to uncover their cards, and to acknowledge before their peoples and the world their imperialistic aims.
The allied governments have thus far refused to discuss the armistice proposal of the Russian government. They could do this the more easily because their own people were content to maintain a state of patient passivity in this respect. Perhaps fear in the allied countries of German militarism and imperialism lent an appearance of justification to this refusal.
But the newest phase of events in Germany has deprived even this faulty argument of its basis. The German people are deter mined to settle accounts with their tormentors, and they are the only power that can accomplish the democratization of Germany. The duty to act now rests upon the peoples of the Entente, and, above all, upon the United States, whose aims in this war, if we are to credit the so often repeated assurances, are entirely disinterested and represent the highest ideals of undiluted democracy.
The United States are in this war not only to fill the breach that Russia defection has made; they are the factor that is to win the war by a gigantic effort to furnish men, ammunition, food and money to the exhausted allies. America, without whose assistance the struggle against the central powers cannot be continued, is in a position to exert a strong influence upon its allies. If it should raise its voice in favor of a general armistice, the armistice is practically assured.
The last speech of President Wilson intimates that America is ready to conclude a democratic peace, Lloyd