Page:René Marchand - Why I Side with the Social Revolution (1920).pdf/30

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unfortunately did not impress me in the least any more than the declarations of Comrade Solz, one of the editors of the violent, „The Social-Democrat“ of Moscow, in which a number of articles had appeared directed against the activities of the „counter-revolutionaries“ of the French Military Mission in Russia and against the unworthy treatment inflicted upon Russian soldiers in France. This last accusation appeared to me at the time so monstrous that it scarcely occupied my attention at all and seemed to me a case of flagrant bribery of the „Social Democrat“ by German agents,

Further, one of the first visits I made in Moscow to the editorial offices of this organ, with a view to exracting an explanation, or raising such a discussion, as would, at least, unmask what to my mind at that time was nothing less than the dishonesty of unscrupulous adversaries. Solz protested his love for the people of France with the greatest energy, declaring that, not for one moment had the violent articles, which had appeared in the „Social Democrat“ been directed against the latter, and could, under no circumstances, concern it. He added further that, in spite of the unjust attitude of the present representatives of France towards the Workers and Peasants Government of Russia, the Russian Proletariat did not forget and could not forget that the French Proletariat on many occasions in the past had been the first to raise the red standard of the World revolution, and courageously to expose itself to blows for the sacred cause of the oppressed. On the question of an armistice with Germany, he was even more emphatic than Volodarsky himself, stating that the Russian