350 THE CLASS STRUGGLE CURRENT AFFAIRS 351 finally brought about the long delayed appointment of General Foch to the post of Generalissimo of the Allied Armies in France.
question of the future relations of the Allies to Russia. The treatment which that question has received at the hands of allied statesmen is in marked and regrettable contrast to the final solution of the question of unity of military command in France. While England, France, and the United States, are placing their military resources in France under one command, their diplomacy, official and unofficial, is apparently acting at cross purposes in the treatment of Russia, as exemplified by the threatened invasion of Siberia.
There is no question of greater importance to the Allied cause today than the question of the proper handling of the Russian situation. And yet the Allies do not seem to be able to agree upon a common plan of action. It is true that for the moment President Wilson intervention seems to have frustrated the designs of the reactionaries in all Allied countries for a Japanese invasion of Siberia. But the reactionaries are again making themselves heard, and there is renewed danger of the design being carried out after all. Needless to say. the carrying out of that design would be the greatest blow imaginable for the cause the Allies as well as for the Russian Revolution and the cause of liberalism the world over. The results of such a blow may in the end turn out to be more disastrous than even the breaking through of some particular military front. Here is a situation which imperatively requires unity of action, and unity of action of the right kind.
And it seems to be up to the United States, people and government, to force it upon the Allies if need be. It must be remembered that the policy of unity of command which resulted in the appointment of General Foch as Commander in Chief of the Allied Armies in France was not accomplished without the forceful intervention of the United States, both through its government and the organs of expression of public opinion.
It is up to us to make the demand for a proper policy towards Russia even more insistent, so that such a policy may be adopted before the Allies shall have suffered on the political field a disaster comparable to the disaster in the military sphere, which War Maps and Liberalism When the devil was sick, the devil a monk would be; When the devil was well, the devil a monk was he.
In a famous interview given by Dr. Von Bethmann Hollweg while still German Imperial Chancellor, that celebrated statesman declared that the peace terms would depend on the condition of the war map at the conclusion of the war. But peace terms are not the only things depending upon the war map. The developments of the recent past prove conclusively that the liberalism of governments and ruling classes and even of peoples, in war times has an intimate relation to the war map: It is almost always in inverse ratio to the favorableness of the war map.
Germany during the past year furnishes the best illustration of this rule.
About a year ago, when the war map looked anything but favorable to Germany, a great wave of liberalism swept over that country. The crest of the wave was reached when the Reichstag passed its famous No Annexation resolution, and the Kaiser solemnly promised to introduce equal suffrage in Prussia.
The first was intended to guarantee the application of Germany new spirit in her dealings with other nations; while the second was intended to assure the benefits of the new era to the German people at home. Both were heralded far and wide as near revolutions. The American Socialist press of a certain type was jubilant: a democratic peace and a liberal Germany were both here. The leading Socialist paper in this country even went to the extent of announcing that all autocratic power had already been abolished in Germany.
The new liberal spirit of Germany in its relation to other nations proved itself at Brest Litovsk, and is daily proving itself in the Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland, Finland, and the former