at Lenine and Trotsky were the
pliant and conscious tools of Germany all the time, and that the protests
of Trotzky at Brest-Litovsk were simply stage-play.

But for all that, unless and until official, documentary evidence is
forthcoming which proves them to have been in such relations with the
German Government and military authorities, they ought not to be condemned
upon the chain of suspicious circumstances, strong as that chain apparently
is. The fact is that they had to make peace, and make it quickly. Kerensky,
had he been permitted to hold on, would equally have had to make a separate
peace, and make it quickly. Only one thing could have delayed that for
long--namely, the arrival of an adequate force of Allied troops on the
Russian front to stiffen the morale and to take the burden of fighting off
from the Russians. Of that there was no sign and no promise or likelihood.
Kerensky knew that he would have had to make peace, at almost any cost and
on almost any terms, if he remained in power. If the Bolsheviki appear in
the light of traitors to the Allies, it should be remembered that pressure
of circumstances would have forced even such a loyal friend of the Allies
as Kerensky certainly proved himself to be to make a separate peace,
practically on Germany's terms, in a very little while. It was not a matter
of months, but of weeks at most, probably of days.

Russia had to have peace. The nation was war-weary and exhausted. The
Allies had not understood the situation--indeed, they never have understood
Russia, even to this day--and had bungled right along. What made it
possible for the Bolsheviki to assert their rule so easily was the fact
that they promised immediate peace, and the great mass of the Russian
workers wanted immediate peace above everything else. They were so eager
for peace that so long as they could get it they cared at the time for
nothing. Literally nothing else mattered. As we have seen, the Bolshevik
leaders had strenuously denied wanting to make a "separate peace." There is
little reason for doubting that they were sincere in this in the sense that
what they wanted was a _general_ peace, if that could be possibly obtained.
Peace they had to have, as quickly as possible. If they could not persuade
their Allies to join with them in making such a general peace, they were
willing to make a _separate_ peace. That is quite different from _wanting_
a separate peace from the first. There was, indeed, i