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be guranteed. Nevertheless, as I insisted, knowing afull well that M. Noulens would accept neither the one nor the other of the rectifications, they agreed to submit the matter to Trotzky, who at once inscribed on the margin of my paper a note to the effect that the necessary authorizations should be delivered to me without delay.
It was in the course of this visit to Smolny that I made the acquaintance of Volodarsky, one of the most prominent of the younger leaders of bolshevism, who was to be rapidly promoted to an important post at the Commissariat for Propaganda where he gave proof later on, up to his assassination, of an extraordinary energy. All the questions that I put to him tended to the one point I had at heart, namely the relations with Germany. With great precision, and without the least hesitation, Volodarsky explained to me in all its vigour the thesis of the Infernational Proletarian Revolution, as opposed to universal Imperialism, logically refuting the accusations made against the Bolsheviks of Germanophilism, and declaring that the latter would never consent to sign a Peace Treaty which would bind the Russian people, hand and foot, to German Imperialism. In regard to the immediate position of the country, he gave proof of an optimism which appeared to me more like extreme bluff He declared that he was convinced that the Bolsheviks would succed in putting a stop to the „sabotage“ and the strikes of the officials and public administration employees, and would very soon be successful in obtaining a firm grip upon the whole machinery of the State. These precise, und indisputably very frank declarations,
