within our party, but it was short-lived. The same year, the most prominent representatives of "left Communism," as, for example, Comrades Radek and Bukharin, openly admitted their mistake. It seemed to them that the Brest Treaty was, on principle, inadmissible, and a compromise with imperialists dangerous to the party of the revolutionary proletariat. In truth it was a compromise with imperialists, but it was a compromise which, in the given surroundings, was imperative.
Today, when I hear criticism, for instance by the Socialist Revolutionaries, of our tactics in signing the Brest Treaty, or when I hear the remark of Comrade Lansbury, made by him in a conversation with me: "Our English trade unionists say that they should be allowed compromises, since Bolshevism allowed itself compromises," I usually reply first of all by way of a simple and "popular" comparison:
Imagine that your automobile is held up by armed bandits. You hand them over your money, passport, revolver, the machine. In return you are spared the pleasant company of the bandits. The compromise is plainly there. "Do, ut des" (I "give" you money, arms, the automobile, in order that you "give" me the possibility of going in peace). But one can hardly find a sane man who would pronounce such a compromise "inadmissible on principle," or would proclaim the compromiser an accomplice of the bandits—even though the bandits, having got into the automobile, used it and the fire-arms for new robberies, as was the case with me. Our compromise with the bandits of German imperialism was such a compromise.
But, when the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries in Russia, the Scheidemanns (and to a great extent the Kautskians) in Germany, Otto Bauer and Friedrich Adler (let alone the Messrs. Renner and Co.) in Austria, the Renaudels, Longuets and Co. in France, the "Independents" and the "Laborites" and the Fabians in England, effected in 1914-1918, and in 1918-1920, compromises with the bandits of their own bourgeoisie, and sometimes with those of the bourgeoisie of the "Allies," against the revolutionary proletariat of their country, that is where these worthies were guilty of aiding and abetting.
