And Russia, the center, has made a proposition to you for peace, for a separate peace; made it officially; made it after thought; made it proudly, not in fear, but in pitiful sympathy with its suffering people and for the sake of a vision of the future in which it verily believes.  They are practical men—­those that made it.  You met them.  We talked with them.  We measured their power.  They are all idealists, but they are idealists sobered by the responsibility of power.  Sentiment has passed out of them into work—­hard work.  They said they could give one year more of starvation to the revolution, but they said it practically, and they prefer to compromise and make peace.  I believe that, if we take their offer, there will be such an outcry of rage and disappointment from the Left Socialists of Germany, Italy, France, and the world, that Lenin and Trotsky will be astonished.  The Red Revolution—­the class war—­will be broken, and evolution will have its chance once more in the rest of Europe.  And you and I know that the men we met in Moscow see this thus, and that they believe the peace conference will not, can not, see it, but will go on to make war and so bring on the European revolution.

But your duty, our duty, is to point out this opportunity, and to vouch for the strength and the will and the character of Lenin and the commissaires of Russia to make and keep the compact they have outlined to you.  Well, this is the briefest way in which I can express my full faith: 

Kautsky has gone to Moscow.  He has gone late; he has gone after we were there.  He will find, as we found, a careful, thoughtful, deliberate group of men in power; in too much power; unremovable and controlling a state of monopoly, which is political, social, economic, financial; which controls or directs all the activities, all the fears, all the hopes, all the aspirations of a great people.  Kautsky will speak to revolutionary Russia for revolutionary Germany, and for a revolutionary Europe.  There will be an appeal in that; there will be a strong appeal in that to the revolutionary Russian commissaires.  But, if I am any judge of character, Lenin and his commissaires will stand by their offer to us until Paris has answered, or until the time set for the answer—­April 10—­shall have passed.  Then, and not until then, will Kautsky receive an answer to his appeal for—­whatever it is the Germans are asking.

It is not enough that you have delivered your message and made it a part of the record of the peace conference.  I think it is your duty to ask the fixed attention of your chiefs upon it for a moment, and to get from them the courtesy of a clear, direct reply to Russia before April 10.

REPORTS OF CAPT.  W.W.  PETTIT

(The reports of Capt.  Pettit are here printed in full, as follows:)

     REPORTS OF CAPT, W.W.  PETTIT