, "Der Krieg und die Internationale"
("The War and the International"). In that pamphlet he boldly declared
that the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was a necessity.
While ridiculing defensive wars, he nevertheless wrote: "The more
obstinate the resistance of France--and now, truly, it is her duty to
protect her territory and her independence against the German
attack--the more surely does she hold, and will hold, the German army
on the Western front." Again: "The victory of Germany over France--a
very regrettable strategic necessity in the opinion of German
Social-Democracy--would signify first of all not merely the defeat of
the permanent army under a democratic republican regime, but the
victory of the feudal and monarchical constitution over the
democratic and republican constitution." Thus wrote Trotzky while
still a Social-Democrat, before he became a Bolshevist dictator. How,
then, can he denounce France for fighting an "imperialist war," or
Britain for helping her to prevent a "victory of the feudal and
monarchical constitution over the democratic and republican
constitution"?

The "Dictatorship of the Proletariat."

The "dictatorship of the proletariat" appeals to Trotzky, because he
has become virtually the dictator of the proletariat and everything
else in Russia within the power of the "Red Guards" and his Chinese
battalions. These Chinese battalions, recruited from Chinese labourers
employed behind the military lines while Russia was in the war, may be
responsible for some of the "executions" which have taken place. The
Bolshevist emissary, Maxim Litvinoff, pooh-poohs all stories of
massacres. It is generally the dregs of the Chinese population who are
recruited for labour gangs abroad; and if "removals" of
"counter-revolutionaries" can be accomplished by Chinese battalions,
the Bolsheviks can then aver that they have not had a hand in it!
Since the acceptance of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty because Russia could
fight no longer, Trotzky has not only talked of raising Bolshevik
armies, but has succeeded in raising them and officering them by
officers of the old Tsarist regime. What Trotzky would not do against
the German armies he is quite prepared to do against those portions of
Russia that have taken advantage of the self-determination granted by
the Bolshevist Administration. Perhaps the peculiar Bolshevist
philosophy regarding wars of defence is also to apply to neighbouring
States if they do no