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the forces it has unloosed turn against it. And now that a Soviet of dockers in Bristol has retorted in kind by refusing to load up munitions destined for use against Russia, perhaps the Government may perceive that two can play at that game.
But, plead the interventionists, we do not propose to undo the main work of Bolshevism. We know the peasants will never give back the land nor take back a Czar. Only the Black Hundreds still hope for that. And these do not demand Allied help, for they fear the Peace Conference would not give them the Russia they want. That is the most flattering thing I have yet heard about the Peace Conference. But if Bolshevism is thus admitted to be so largely sound and irrevocable, the case for intervention becomes still weaker.
Milner pretends we must remain in Russia to protect those who fought on our side. As if the Bolsheviks would be so foolish as to refuse them an amnesty, if we consented to clear out! The only plausible plea for intervention put forward in any respectable quarter is The New Europe's plea that the Peace Conference would be false to its function if it left so large an area of the world a prey to chaos and disorder. But is Paris itself so free from unrest, Paris where prices go up daily and soldiers are forbidden to enter for fear of riots, as they are equally forbidden in Lyons and Marseilles? Only on one condition could the Peace Conference presume to interfere in internal politics—if it does so all round, in Egypt, say, or Ireland, or in the Southern States of America where the negroes are terrorised from recording their votes Hands off Russia therefore—until they are clean!
But even those who call on the Peace Conference to do its war-duty, no longer dare ask for military expeditions. They know that the peoples, so far from being ready to send fresh forces, are clamouring for the recall of their frozen troops, that we are ashamed of the French negroes in Odessa. The plan now put forward in The Times is to starve out the Bolsheviks, while encircling them with well-fed populations, the sight of whose pampered paunches would seduce them from the faith. It is like that ghastly story in Poe when the walls of a steel chamber close gradually upon their victim. Truly a Christian reply to "the horrors of Bolshevism"!
But whence comes this right to blockade Russia? When did we proclaim war on her? Why are we throwing her into the arms of Germany? A truce to this folly! Let us intervene in Russia not with arms or blockades, but with food and friendship! Let us leave Russia the right she has proclaimed for all—the right of self-determination.
J. E. Francis, 11 and 18 Bream's Buildings, London E.C.4.
