How could it be otherwise?  Germany and Russia are near neighbors.  Their economic relations have been continuous for ages, and the Allies have made them indispensable in the future; Russia is ear-marked as Germany’s best colony.  The two peoples are become interdependent.  The Teuton will recognize the Slav as an ally in economics, and will pay himself politically.  Who will now thwart or check this process?  Russia must live, and therefore buy and sell, barter and negotiate.  Can a parchment treaty hinder or invalidate her dealings?  Can it prevent an admixture of politics in commercial arrangements, seeing that they are but two aspects of one and the same transaction?  It is worthy of note that a question which goes to the quick of the matter was never mooted.  It is this:  Is it an essential element of the future ordering of the world that Germany shall play no part whatever in its progress?  Is it to be assumed that she will always content herself with being treated as the incorrigible enemy of civilization?  And, if not, what do all these checks and barriers amount to?

In Russia there are millions of Germans conversant with the language, laws, and customs of the people.  Many of them have been settled there for generations.  They are passionately attached to their race, and neither unfriendly nor useless to the country of their adoption.  The trade, commerce, and industry of the European provinces are largely in their hands and in those of their forerunners and helpers, the Jews.  The Russo-German and Jewish middlemen in the country have their faces ever turned toward the Fatherland.  They are wont to buy and sell there.  They always obtained their credit in Berlin, Dresden, or Frankfurt.  They acted as commercial travelers, agents, brokers, bankers, for Russians and Germans.  They are constantly going and coming between the two countries.  How are these myriads to be fettered permanently and kept from eking out a livelihood in the future on the lines traced by necessity or interest in the past?  The Russians, on their side, must live, and therefore buy and sell.  Has the Conference or the League the right or power to dictate to them the persons or the people with whom alone they may have dealings?  Can it narrow the field of Russia’s political activities?  Some people flatter themselves that it can.  In this case the League of Nations must transform itself into an alliance for the suppression of the German race.

Burning indignation and moral reprobation were the sentiments aroused among the high-minded Allies by the infamous Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.  For that mockery of a peace, even coming from an enemy, transcended the bounds of human vengeance.  It was justly anathematized by all Entente peoples as the loathsome creation of a frenzied people.  But shortly afterward the Entente governments themselves, their turn having come, wrought what Russians of all parties regard as a political patchwork of variegated injustice more