weakened by that very policy of the Czarists and the bourgeois classes, which we, as a revolutionary party, have always fought against before this war and during this war. You remember, comrades, under what conditions our delegation went to Brest-Litovsk last time, right after one of the sessions of the Third All-Russian Congress of the Soviets. At that session, we reported on the state of the negotiations, and the demands of our opponents. These demands, as you remember, were really no more than masked, or, rather, half-masked annexationist aspirations at the expense of Lithuania, Courland, a part of Livonia, the Isles of Moon Sound, as well as a half-masked demand for a punitive war indemnity which we then estimated would amount to six, eight or even ten milliards of rubles. During interruption of the sessions, which continued for about ten days, a considerable disturbance took place in Austria-Hungary; strikes of masses of workers broke out, and these strikes were the first recognition of our methods of conducting peace negotiations that we met with from the proletariat of the Central Empires, as against the annexationist demands of the German militarism. We promised here no miracles but we did say that the road we were pursuing was the only road remaining to the revolutionary democracy for securing the possibility of its further development. There is room for complaint that the proletariat of the other countries, and particularly of the Central Empires, is too slow to enter the road of open revolutionary struggle, yes, it must be admitted that the pace of its development is all too slow--but, nevertheless, there could be observed a movement in Austria-Hungary which swept the entire state and which was a direct echo of the Brest-Litovsk negotiations. Leaving for Brest-Litovsk, it was our common opinion that there was no ground to believe that just this wave would sweep away the Austro-German militarism. If we had been convinced that this could be expected, we would gladly have given the promise that several persons demanded from us, namely, that under no circumstances would we sign a separate peace with Germany. I said at that very time, that we could not make such a promise, for it would amount to taking upon ourselves the obligation of vanquishing the German militarism. The secret of attaining such a victory was not in our possession. And inasmuch as we would not undertake the obligation to change the balance of the world powers at a moment's notice, we frankly and openly declared that revolutionary power may under certain conditions be compelled to agree to an annexationist peace. A revolutionary power would fall short of its high principles only in the event that it should attempt to conceal from its own people the predatory character of the peace, but by no means, however, in the event that the course of the struggle should compel it to adopt such a peace.