n the demand made at
the beginning of December upon the Allies to restate their war aims within
a period of seven days an arrogant and provocative tone which invited the
suspicion that the ultimatum--for such it was--had not been conceived in
good faith; that it was deliberately framed in such a manner as to prevent
compliance by the Allies. And it may well be the fact that Lenine and
Trotzky counted upon the inevitable refusal to convince the Russian people,
and especially the Russian army, that the Allied nations were fighting for
imperialistic ends, just as the Bolsheviki had always charged. The
Machiavellian cunning of such a policy is entirely characteristic of the
conspirator type.

On December 14th the armistice was signed at Brest-Litovsk, to last for a
period of twenty-eight days. On December 5th, the Bolsheviki had published
the terms upon which they desired to effect the armistice. These terms,
which the Germans scornfully rejected, provided that the German forces
which had been occupied on the Russian front should not be sent to other
fronts to fight against the Allies, and that the German troops should
retire from the Russian islands held by them. In the armistice as it was
finally signed at Brest-Litovsk there was a clause which, upon its face,
seemed to prove that Trotzky had kept faith with the Allies. The clause
provided that there should be no transfer of troops by either side, for the
purpose of military operations, during the armistice, from the front
between the Baltic and the Black Sea. This, however, was, from the German
point of view, merely a _pro forma_ arrangement, a "scrap of paper."
Grumbach wrote to _L'Humanite_ that on December 20th Berlin was full of
German soldiers from the Russian front en route to the western front. He
said that he had excellent authority for saying that this had been called
to the attention of Lenine and Trotzky by the Independent Social Democrats,
but that, "nevertheless, they diplomatically shut their eyes."[88] It is
more than probable that, in the circumstances, neither Lenine nor Trotzky
cared much if at all for such a breach of the terms of the armistice, but,
had their attitude been otherwise, what could they have done? They were as
helpless as ever men were in the world, as subsequent events proved.

As one reads the numerous declamatory utterances of Trotzky in those
critical days of early December, 1917, the justice of Lenine's scornful
description of his as