498 THE CLASS STRUGGLE EDITORIALS 499 other policy on making the world safe for democracy and the self determination of nations. The president has completely reversed his previous policy on Russia. as he did on other occasions, on Mexico and on the war.
The statement announcing this new policy, issued by Acting Secretary of State Polk, but prepared, it is said, by President Wilson, opens. In the judgment of the government of the United States a judgment arrived at after repeated and very searching consideration of the whole situation military intervention in Russia would be more likely to add to the present sad confusion there than to cure it and would injure Russia rather than help her out of her distress. Such military intervention as has been most frequently proposed, even supposing it to be efficacious in its immediate object of delivering an attack upon Germany from the east, would, in its judgment, be more likely to turn out to be merely a method of making use of Russia than to be a method of serving her. Her people, if they profited by it at all, could not profit by it in time to deliver them from their present desperate difficulties, and their substance would meanwhile be used to maintain foreign armies, not to reconstruct their own or to feed their own men, women and children.
This is excellent, a complete statement of the case against intervention. It is President Wilson at his loftiest. But the statement proceeds. As the government of the United States sees the present circumstances, therefore, military actions is admissible in Russia now only to render such protection and help as is possible to the Czecho Slovaks against the armed Austrian and German prisoners who are attacking them, and to steady efforts at self government or self defence in which the Russians themselves may be willing to accept assistance.
The United States will send a detachment of troops to Vladivostok, together with Japan, with the purpose of co operating as a single force in the occupation of Vladivostok and in safe guarding, so far as it may, the country to the rear of the westward moving Czecho Slovaks.
The Czecho Slovaks moving westward? That means away from Vladivostok, into European Russia, to wage war against the Soviets and the Russian people. The Czecho Slovaks wish to leave Russia for the western front; instead, they are to be kept in Russia, to make war against the Revolution. The plan is this: the Czecho Slovaks will be amply munitioned; they will continue their guerilla war against the Soviets, with the hope that Cossacks, military adventurers, and counter revolutionary forces generally will rally around the Czecho Slovaks, crush the Soviets, and force Russia into the war by means of a military dictatorship.
And yet the statement declares that the government of the United States contemplates no intervention in her (Russia s) internal affairs. The statement, moreover, adds insult to injury by mention of armed Austrian and German prisoners who are attacking the Czecho Slovaks: Proof conclusive, indeed, of the pro German duplicity of the Bolsheviki! But is it? Are not the Czecho Slovaks former Austrian soldiers, captured by the Russians? If these former Austrian soldiers are willing to fight for the allies, why should not other former Austrian soldiers yes, and German too be willing to fight for the proletarian revolution?
This is the culmination of the policy of the allies toward Russia, a counter revolutionary policy. Only the blind, says the New York Novy Mir, could not perceive that the Allies have been waging war against the Russian Soviet Republic by all means at their disposal, and that they have bent their efforts to crush the republic. This is a policy of intervention in the internal affairs of Russia, a policy of imposing an alien will upon the people.