men and women, those unconquerable
comrades, who have by their sacrifice added fresh lustre to the
international movement. Those Russian comrades who have made greater
sacrifices, who have suffered more, who have shed more heroic blood than
any like number of men and women anywhere else on earth. They have led
the first real convention of any democracy that ever drew breath. The
first act of that memorable revolution was to proclaim a state of peace
with an appeal not to the kings, not to the rulers, but an appeal to the
people of all nations. They are the very breath of democracy; the
quintessence of freedom. They made their appeal to the people of all
nations, the Allies as well as the Central Powers, to send
representatives to lay down terms of a peace that should be lasting.
Here was a fine opportunity to strike a blow to make democracy safe to
the world. Was there any response to that noble appeal? And here let me
say that appeal will be written in letters of gold in the history of the
world. While it has been charged that the leaders made a traitorous
peace with Germany, let us consider this proposition briefly. At the
time of the revolution, Russia had lost 4,000,000 of her soldiers. She
was absolutely bankrupt. Her soldiers were without arms. This was what
was bequeathed to the revolution by the Czar. For this condition, Leon
Trotsky was not responsible nor was the Bolshevik movement, but the Czar
was.

"When Leon Trotsky came into power, he found the secret treaties made
between the French government and the British government and the Italian
government which was to divide the territory of the Central Powers if
the Allies were victorious, and these secret treaties have not been
repudiated up to this time. Very little has been said about them in the
American newspapers. This shows that the purpose of the Allies is
exactly the purpose of the Central Powers.

"Wars have been waged for conquests, for plunder, and since the feudal
ages, the feudal lords along the Rhine made war upon each other. They
wanted to enlarge their domains, to increase their power and their
wealth and so they declared war upon each other. But they did not go to
war any more than the Wall Street Junkers go to war. Their predecessors
declared the wars, but their miserable serfs fought the wars. The serfs
believed that it was their patriotic duty to fall upon one another, to
wage war upon one another. And that is war in a nut shell. The master