different from wanting a separate peace from the first.  There was, indeed, in 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 associate as a “man who blinds himself with revolutionary phrases” becomes manifest.  It is easy to understand the strained relations that existed between the two men.  His “neither war nor peace” gesture—­it was no more!—­his dramatic refusal to sign the stiffened peace terms, his desire to call all Russia to arms again to fight the Germans, his determination to create a vast “Red Army” to renew the war against