358 THE CLASS STRUGGLE TWO YEARS OF SOVIET RUSSIA 359 for the continued occupation of the Baltic provinces by German forces under Von der Goltz, the murderer of the Finnish revolution. In spite of the continued protests of the Communists and the Independent Social Democrats of Germany large military divisions under the control of frankly counter revolutionary imperialist elements in Germany, the very elements who were chiefly responsible for the outbreak of the war and for the methods employed by the German forces, were continually crossing the border between Germany and the Baltic provinces. While the people are being gulled with promises of trials that are to bring the guilty imperialists of Germany to justice, our ruling class is making common cause with these same imperialists for the suppression of Russian freedom in the interests of international capitalism.
the promising scion of an old American family, a young man who had already established for himself an enviable reputation as a liberal literat, was sent by the Administration, together with the well known Lincoln Steffens, to Russia to investigate conditions there with a view to finding a basis upon which a peace between the Allies and the Bolshevist government could be arranged. The commission, after an absence of a number of months, returned from Russia while the peace negotiations in Paris were going on. Bullitt at once attempted to lay his report, which offered concrete and acceptable proposals from the Soviet government, before the President, but was unable to get even a hearing, in spite of his most persistent efforts. By Colonel House he was told that the President has a one track mind, which, being occupied with the peace treaty, could not be distracted by outside considerations. Wher Bullitt finally realized that Wilson, the Liberal, who had sent Steffens and himself to Russia to arrange peace terms, had succumbed to the openly imperialistic demands of the other parties to the peace that was in the process of creation at that time, considering himself released from further obligations, published his report, to the joy of every friend of the Russian revolution and the indignant consternation of the capitalist press.
The history of the various counter revolutionary uprisings that have advanced from all points of the compass upon the proletarian government of Russia with the open assistance of the allied nations is too recent and too well known to need repetition. Korniloff, Kaledine and Alexieff, Admiral Kolchak and Denikin, each in their turn occupied the front pages of the newspapers of the allied nations; each in turn were reported as winning victory after victory, each in turn were supported liberally with Allied money and Allied forces. And in the end, each one of them was gently but definitely dropped, not, to be sure, before he had been whipped so decisively by the Red Army of the Bolsheviki that it was throwing good money after bad to continue to support him. It mattered not that these men were obviously self seeking in their motives; that they established, in the territory they succeeded in subduing, a reign of terror that beggared the best efforts of the deposed Tsar. No methods were too shameful, no accomplice too perfidious to accomplish the defeat of Soviet Russia. The very men who, a year ago, claimored for intervention in Russia in order to drive out the Germans, the very men who accused the Bolshevist leaders, in forged documents, of being in the pay of the German imperialists, in the armstice terms expressly provided Why this vehement hatred of Bolshevist Russia. The reason is fourfold. The first, which has already been mentioned, the fear that the Soviet government will adhere to its refusal to pay the debts contracted by the Tsarist government in the Allied nations. Second, the publication of the secret treaties, which made it сее ngly awkward for the defenders of worlddemocracy to keep up the fiction of disinterestedness with which they had until then piously covered their imperialistic aims.
Thirdly, the socialization of the lands, the forest, the mines, the banks and the industries in Russia. For great, rich undeveloped Russia is to the capitalist countries in Europe what Mexico is to the United States, a field for unlimited investment affording under a capitalistic regime opportunities for enormous profits. As a matter of fact, British, French and German capitalists who have been for years heavily interested in Russian investments have suffered great losses through the socialization of Russian industries and the refusal of Russian peasants and workmen to submit to the exploitation that before the revolution was a matter of course. The London Financial News puts the matter in a nutshell when it tersely remarks in the City it is realized that events are shaping more and more toward an international suzerainty over Russia, modelled upon the British surveillance of Egypt. Such an event would transform Russian bonds into the cream of the international market.
The last weeks have again brought a new savior for Russia into public notice. According to the newspaper reports Soviet Russia is surrounded by enemies on all sides. In screaming headlines Petrograd has fallen again and again. General Yudenitch, the newest white hope of west European capital, after advancing upon Bolshevist Russia in an onslaught that seemed