g
as the war lasts. That they cannot now withdraw from there at once is
clear enough. If peace is signed, then the self-determination of the
people in the occupied territory will decide. But here arises the
great difficulty: how this right of self-determination is to be
exercised.

"The Russians naturally do not want the vote to be taken while the
German bayonets are still in the country, and the Germans reply that
the unexampled terrorism of the Bolsheviks would falsify any election
result, since the 'bourgeois,' according to Bolshevist ideas, are not
human beings at all. My idea of having the proceedings controlled by a
_neutral_ Power was not altogether acceptable to anyone. During the
war no neutral Power would undertake the task, and the German
occupation could not be allowed to last until the ultimate end. In
point of fact, both sides are afraid of terrorisation by the opposing
party, and each wishes to apply the same itself.

"_December 26, 1917._--There is no hurry apparently in this place. Now
it is the Turks who are not ready, now the Bulgarians, then it is the
Russians' turn--and the sitting is again postponed or broken off
almost as soon as commenced.

"I am reading some memoirs from the French Revolution. A most
appropriate reading at the present time, in view of what is happening
in Russia and may perhaps come throughout Europe. There were no
Bolsheviks then, but men who tyrannised the world under the battle-cry
of freedom were to be found in Paris then as well as now in St.
Petersburg. Charlotte Corday said: 'It was not a man, but a wild beast
I killed.' These Bolsheviks in their turn will disappear, and who can
say if there will be a Corday ready for Trotski?

"Joffe told me about the Tsar and his family, and the state of things
said to exist there. He spoke with great respect of Nicolai
Nicolaievitch as a thorough man, full of energy and courage, one to be
respected even as an enemy. The Tsar, on the other hand, he considered
cowardly, false, and despicable. It was a proof of the incapacity of
the bourgeois that they had tolerated such a Tsar. Monarchs were all
of them more or less degenerate; he could not understand how anyone
could accept a form of government which involved the risk of having a
degenerate ruler. I answered him as to this, that a monarchy had first
of all one advantage, that there was at least one place in the state
beyond the sphere of personal ambition and intrigues, and as to