522 THE CLASS STRUGGLE LETTER TO THE AMERICAN WORKINGMEN 523 tive forces of organized human labor, by utilizing machines and all the wonders of technique America has taken the first place among free and civilized nations. But at the same time America, like a few other nations, has become characteristic for the depth of the abyss that divide a handful of brutal millionaires who are stagnating in a mire of luxury, and millions of laboring starving men and women who are always staring want in the face.
Four years of imperialistic slaughter have left their trace.
Irrefutably and clearly events have shown to the people that both imperialistic groups, the English as well as the German, have been playing false. The four years of war have shown in their effects the great law of capitalism in all wars; that he who is richest and mightiest profits the most, takes the greatest share of the spoils while he who is weakest is exploited, martyred, oppressed and outraged to the utmost.
In the number of its colonial possessions, English imperialism has always been more powerful than any of the other countries. England has lost not a span of its acquired land.
On the other hand it has acquired control of all German colonies in Africa, has occupied Mesopotamia and Palestine.
German imperialism was stronger because of the wonderful organization and ruthless discipline of its armies, but as far as colonies are concerned, is much weaker than its opponent.
It has now lost all of its colonies, but has robbed half of Europe and throttled most of the small countries and weaker peoples. What a high conception of liberation on either side!
How well they have defended their fatherlands, these gentlemen of both groups, the Anglo French and the German capitalists together with their lackeys, the Social Patriots.
American plutocrats are wealthier than those of any other country partly because they are geographically more favorably situated. They have made the greatest profits. They have made all, even the weakesť countries, their debtors.
They have amassed gigantic fortunes during the war. And every dollar is stained with the blood that was shed by millions of murdered and crippled men, shed in the high, honorable and holy war of freedom.
Had the Anglo French and American bourgeoisie accepted the Soviet invitation to participate in peace negotiations at Brest Litovsk, instead of leaving Russia to the mercy of brutal Germany a just peace without annexations and indemnities, a peace based upon complete equality could have been forced upon Germany, and millions of lives might have been saved.
Because they hoped to reestablish the Eastern Front by once more drawing us into the whirlpool of warfare, they refused to attend peace negotiations and gave Germany a free hand to cram its shameful terms down the throat of the Russian people. It lay in the power of the Allied countries to make the Brest Litovsk negotiations the forerunner of a general peace.
It ill becomes them to throw the blame for the Russo German peace upon our shoulders!
The workers of the whole world, in whatever country they may live, rejoice with us and sympathize with us, applaud us for having burst the iron ring of imperialistic agreements and treaties, for having dreaded no sacrifice, however great, to free ourselves, for having established ourselves as a socialist republic, even so rent asunder and plundered by German imperialists, for having raised the banner of peace, the banner of Socialism over the world. What wonder that we are hated by the capitalist class the world over. But this hatred of imperialism and the sympathy of the class conscious workers of all countries give us assurance of the righteousness of our cause.
He is no Socialist who cannot understand that one cannot and must not hesitate to bring even that greatest of sacrifice, the sacrifice of territory, that one must be ready to accept even military defeat at the hands of imperialism in the interests of victory over the bourgeoisie, in the interests of a transfer of power to the working class. For the sake of their cause, that is for the conquest of world power, the imperialists of