426 THE CLASS STRUGGLE DOCUMENTS 427 WHY DON YOU RETURN HOME?
To the American and British Soldiers conmen and peasant deputies) is the only real democratic Government in the world?
Of course you don know all this. Because your masters are afraid to tell you the truth about revolutionary Russia. They are telling you lies about the atrocities of the Bolsheviks. Don be lieve them! There is no disruption, no anarchy, no disorder in Russia. Revolutionary Russia is indeed, as one of your American journalists has said, the paradise of the workers and the poor.
The capitalists an imperialists of France, Great Britain and the United States, the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, the Morgans want to destroy this paradise of the workers and the poor. The bloodthirsty exploiters of the Entente want to defeat the revolution.
Why? Because the revolution is making headway, because revolutionary ideas are being spread in all countries. Country after country is getting revolutionized; the German workers have followed the example of the Russians, The French and Italian and British are going to follow the example of the Germans, This is the time of Revolts! The workers of the whole world are going to throw off the capitalist yoke! The Russian and the German revolutions are just the first two acts of the Great World Revolution. The capitalists of the Entente are trembling. Don they hear the sounds of revolt all around? Don they realize, don they know that it is coming? And this is why they want to defeat the Revolution before the Revolution defeats them. This is why they declared war on revolutionary Russia. And this is why they don want to send you home.
You are here to fight against Democracy and Freedom. You are here to fight against the Russian workers and poor peasants.
Do you realize that in this great battle of Labor against Capital, of Freedom against exploitation, of real Democracy against the fakedemocracy of Rockefeller and Morgan you are to fight on the side of your cruel masters against your brethren, against your fellow workers? Are you not workingmen yourselves?
You are going to shed your blood and our blood for the benefit of the Allied plutocrats, for the benefit of the Rockefeller Morgan kaiserism.
We don want war. We want peace with your American and British fellow workers! Don you want peace with us? Don you want to go home?
The war is over, but a new war is starting. This new war is the class war. The oppressed of all countries are rising against the oppressors, because the war has brought so much distress and so much sufferings to the poor that they can suffer no longer. Do you realize that your are shedding your blood in the interests of the oppressors and not of the oppressed? Do you realize that you are to defend oppression and exploitation and thąt you are to give your very lives for the interests of those who are now, after the fall of the Kaiser the only kaisers in the world?
Do you want to sacrifice your lives in order that the capitalists may obtain a greater hold on our class, the workers? Of course not!
Demand to go home. Hold meetings in your regiments, form Soldiers Councils, and force your demands on your Governments and your officers. If you are convinced in the justness of the cause of Labor then come over to our side and we will give you a hearty welcome into the ranks of those who are fighting for the emancipation of Labor.
The group of English speaking Communists.
Comrades!
The war is over, why are you not returning home? The people in England and America went nearly mad with joy when the long hoped for peace at last arrived. But why is there no peace for you, and for us? President Wilson and his colleagues are in Europe, the other Allied governments have also appointed their delegates, and soon the Peace Conference will assemble. But in the meantime you are still condemned to fight and die, and war with all its horrors is raging in Russia.
For many long, weary agonizing months, perhaps years, your old folks, your wives, your little ones have been overwhelmed with anxiety about you. Now in their innocence their anxiety has been turned into joyful expectation of your return. Can you not picture them every knock, every footstep they hear makes their hearts leap in the belief that it is someone bringing tidings of your homecoming. But your dear ones will wait in vain your, masters tinue to drive you through the valley of death, and you do not know, but that your bodies may rot in the mud and blood of the battlefield. Don you want to mingle with your loved ones again?
The war is over. Why don you go home?
For over four years your governments have kept you at war, and have condemned millions of your fellow citizens to death, and millions more to a fate worse than death. You made these fearful sacrifices for what you were led to believe to be the defense of Europe against the domination of the Kaiser, and once and for all to relieve the world from the crushing burden of armaments; from the menace of Prussian militarism, Well, this menace is removed. Prussian militarism is crushed.
The kaiser is a fugitive. The German workers have risen in revolt and have delivered a death blow to the power of the reactionary Junker class.
Why then are you still fighting? Above all why are you in Russia. The help of the Allied governments against Germany was never desired by Russia. It is now quite unnecessary.
It was never intended that the Allied troops in Russia were to fight Germans.
This is perfectly obvious now since the war with Germany is apparently over, and yet the war against the Russian people still continues. Why? The reason is not far to seek.
The workers and peasants in Russia have done what your rulers fear you will do; they have swept the whole class of parasites, courtiers, landlords, and capitalists out of power, and have taken possession of the land and the means of production for the use of the whole people. The Russian people refuse to be the slaves of an idle class any longer. They are constructing a new order of society in which the products of labor will go to those who work. The spirit which animates the Russian people has spread westward, and now the Austrian, Hungarian, and German people have overthrown their rules, and are rapidly travelling along the same lines as the workers of Russia. It is the awakening of the real democracy that we are witnessing today: The common workers in field, factory,