It was agreed by the Council of Ten, then Four, that President Wilson should draft a proclamation inviting all organized parties in Russia to attend a meeting in order to discuss with the representatives of the Allied and Associated Great Powers the means of restoring order and peace in Russia. Participation should be conditional on a cessation of hostilities. This meeting was to take place on Prinkipos Island in the Sea of Marmora. The President issued the proclamation, but the French were opposed to it and communicated with the Ukrainians and the other anti-Soviet groups in Russia, to whom, as well as to the Bolsheviks, the proposal was addressed, telling them that if they refused to consider the proposal, the French would support them and continue to support them, and not allow the Allies, if they could prevent it, to make peace with the Russian Soviet government. The time set for the gathering at Prinkipos was on 15th February, 1919, but no party acted in a definite way and it never took place. At the time of the Bolshevik revolution, the national debt of Russia was 700,000,000,000 of rubles. The interest and sinking fund charge was 4,000,000,000 of rubles annually. There was a deficit in the annual budget of one milliard. Of this total debt, _15,500,000,000 of rubles were owing to France_, and France felt the prospective loss far more than any of the other creditor nations, for the French government had encouraged the purchase of rubles by her nationals, and these now nearly worthless securities were held by the peasants from Artois to Gascony. [Illustration: The Murman and Vologda railways] Like the Prinkipos proposal, nothing came of a Soviet proposal for peace which was brought to the Paris Peace Conference by an emissary dispatched by the American commissioners to obtain from the Bolsheviks a statement of the terms upon which they were ready to stop fighting. This was in February, after the desperate situation of the troops near Archangel was brought to the attention of the Conference by the Allied Military commanders. These Soviet peace terms were approved by Colonel House at Paris, who referred them to the President, "but the President said he had a one track mind and was occupied with Germany at the time, and could not think about Russia, and that he left the Russian matter all to Colonel House." The sessions at Versailles adjourned without day [delay?]. If we were at war with Russia in 1919, we are still at war with her. Peace was never made with Russia; and peace never will be made in the hearts of those plain people in the Vaga and Dvina villages, who saw their pitifully meager possessions confiscated in the cause of "friendly intervention," their lowly homes set ablaze and themselves turned adrift to find shelter in the cheerless snows.