saying so, to stop reasoning, stop the haranguing, and all that old stuff.  And especially are we sick of the propaganda by the sword.  We want to stop fighting.  We know that each country must evolve its own revolution out of its own conditions and in its own imagination.  To force it by war is not scientific, not democratic, not socialistic.  And we are fighting now only in self-defense.  We will stop fighting, if you will let us stop.  We will call back our troops, if you will withdraw yours.  We will demobilize.  We need the picked organizers and the skilled workers now in the army for our shops, factories, and farms.  We would love to recall them to all this needed work, and use their troop trains to distribute our goods and our harvests, if only you will call off your soldiers and your moral, financial, and material support from our enemies, and the enemies of our ideals.  Let every country in dispute on our borders self-determine its own form of government and its own allegiance.

“But you must not treat us as a conquered nation.  We are not conquered.  We are prepared to join in a revolutionary, civil war all over all of Europe and the world, if this good thing has to be done in this bad way of force.  But we would prefer to have our time and our energy to work to make sure that our young, good thing is good.  We have proved that we can share misery, and sickness, and poverty; it has helped us to have these things to share, and we think we shall be able to share the wealth of Russia as we gradually develop it.  But we are not sure of that; the world is not sure.  Let us Russians pay the price of the experiment; do the hard, hard work of it; make the sacrifice—­then your people can follow us, slowly, as they decide for themselves that what we have is worth having.”

That is the message you bring back, Mr. Bullitt.  It is your duty to deliver it.  It is mine to enforce it by my conception of the situation as it stands in Russia and Europe to-day.

     It seems to me that we are on the verge of war, a new war, a
     terrible war—­the long-predicted class war—­all over Europe.

The peace commission, busy with the settlement of the old war, may not see the new one, or may not measure aright the imminent danger of it.  Germany is going over, Hungary has gone, Austria is coming into the economic revolutionary stage.  The propaganda for it is old and strong in all countries:  Italy, France, Spain, Belgium, Norway, Sweden—­you know.  All men know this propaganda.  But that is in the rear.  Look at the front.

     Russia is the center of it.  Germany, Austria, Hungary are
     the wings of the potential war front of—­Bolshevism.