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pistol at the head of the Soviet Government, after everything had been done to avoid it. It was evident that it could not be regaded as an agreement with German Imperialism but, on the contrary (as they themselves had solemnly proclaimed), the Bolsheviks saw in it only an act of unprecedented violence, with which they remained more than ever determined not to make their reckoning until circumstances would permit. Here we were doing our best to delay this hour. Owing to our blunder, not „Bolsheviks“ (translated into „restless elements“, „plunderers“, „scum of society“) but Russians, Russians profoundly convinced and inspired with the noble ideal of human fraternity, in the Christian sense of the word,—Russians fully conscious og their strength and ready to give their lives for their „revolutionary îatherland“—ready to expose their breasts to our bullets and, in spite of themselves, fire upon „their own“. And all that for the supreme advantage of German Imperialism! On the other hand, generous France, owing to the blunder and the narrow prejudice of her diplomats was unconsciously to aid the development of Civil War in Russia, to let lose the white terror, a hundred, thousand times more terrible than the red which, without this fatal recrudescence of Civil War, had seemed well on the way to be appeased. I had but one thought at this moment, namely that of assisting by all means in my power to stop this disastrous intervention, for the furtherance of which I, in my blindness, had also worked. I could not, in fact, perceive what shame there might be in saying: „I have erred: I have taken the wrong direction“.—Nevertheless, when I informed
