BourgeoisieRussian RevolutionSocialismWorking Class

545 IN BRITISH CAPTIVITY 544 THE CLASS STRUGGLE the circumstances of this arrest and the conditions of our confinement, see the letter addressed to the Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs, printed herein below. This letter wrote on a Danish steamer after my release from British captivity, intending it for Mr. Milukoff. But the leader of the Cadet party fell beneath the burden of his loyalty to the London Stock Exchange before the Finnish train brought us to Beloostrov. Mr.
Tereshtchenko with his colleagues, however, had taken over in full the heritage of Mr. Milukoff, just as the latter took over in its entirety the heritage of the Czar diplomacy. Therefore, am fully justified in addressing to Mr. Tereshtchenko the letter which was intended for Mr. Milukoff.
The original of this letter was forwarded to him through the medium of the chairman of the Petrograd Council of Workers and Soldiers Deputies, Cheidze. wish to say a few words about the German war prisoners with whom have spent a month. There were 800 of them; about 500 sailors from German Naval vessels sunk by the British; about 200 workingmen who were caught in Canada when the war broke out, and about 100 officers and civilian prisoners coming from bourgeois circles. Our relations took shape from the first day, or more correctly, from the moment the bulk of the war prisoners found that we were arrested as revolutionary socialists. The officers and non commissioned Naval officers who had separate quarters, at once beheld in us their hated enemies.
The rank and file, however, surrounded us with a tight ring of sympathy. This month life in the camp resembled one continuous meeting. We told the prisoners about the Russian revolution, about the causes of the breaking up of the second International, of the groupings within socialism. The relations between the democratic rank and file and the officers, some of whom kept tabs on their sailors, became very acute.
The German officers finally addressed to the Commandant of the camp, Colonel Morris, a complaint against our anti patriotic propaganda. The British Colonel, of course, immediately sided with Hohenzollern patriotism and prohibited my further public appearances. This, however, occurred during the last days of our stay in the camp, and made our relations with the German sailors and workingmen more intimate who replied to the Colonel prohibition with a protest bearing 530 signatures.
When they were taking us away from the camp, the prisoners gave us a send off which will always remain in our memory. The officers and non commissioned officers, in general a patriotic minority, locked themselves in their quarters; but our internationalists stood in two lines along the entire camp, the orchestra played the socialist march, and hands were stretched out to us from all sides. One of the prisoners delivered a speech in which he expressed his delight with the Russian revolution, emitted a sincere curse against the German government, and asked us to give his fraternal greeting to the Russian Proletariat. That the way we fraternized with the German sailors at Amherst. It is true at that time we didn know yet that Prince Lvov own Zimmerwaldists, Tseretellis and Tchernoffs looked upon fraternizing as contradicting the fundamentals of International Socialism. In this they agree with the Hohenzollern government, which has also forbidden fraternizing with a less hypocritical reasoning, however, It is superfluous to say that the American Canadian press has explained our imprisonment as being due to Germanism.
Our own fatherland yellow Cadet papers have taken of course, the same road.
This charge of Pro Germanism had occasion to hear during the War, not for the first time. When the French chauvinists were preparing for my exile from France, they spread a rumor about my Pro German tendencies, but the same French press informed its readers before that of having sentenced me in Germany to imprisonment for the German pamphlet, Der Krieg und die Internationale, which was directed against German imperialism and against the policy of the official ma