Finally, the Committee unanimously passed a resolution
approving every step taken in trying to obtain peace, and at
the same time "sending a fraternal greeting to the Red Army
of workers and peasants engaged in ensuring the
independence of Soviet Russia." The meeting then turned to
talk of other things.
I left, rather miserable to think how little I had foreseen
when Soviet Russia was compelled last year to sign an
oppressive peace with Germany, that the time would
come when they would be trying to buy peace from
ourselves. As I went out I saw another unhappy figure,
unhappy for quite different reasons. Angelica Balabanova,
after dreaming all her life of socialism in the most fervent
Utopian spirit, had come at last to Russia to find that a
socialist state was faced with difficulties at least as real as
those which confront other states, that in the battle there was
little sentiment and much cynicism, and that dreams worked
out in terms of humanity in the face of the opposition of the
whole of the rest of the world are not easily recognized by
their dreamers. Poor little Balabanova, less than five feet
high, in a black coat that reached to her feet but did not
make her look any taller, was wandering about like a lost and
dejected spirit. Not so, she was thinking, should socialists
deal with their enemies. Somehow, but not so. Had the
silver trumpets blown seven times in vain, and was it really
necessary to set to work and, stone by stone, with bleeding
hands, level the walls of Jericho?
There was snow falling as I walked home. Two workmen,
arguing, were walking in front of me. "If only it were not
for the hunger," said one. "But will that ever change?" said
the other.
KAMENEV AND THE MOSCOW SOVIET
February 11th.
Litvinov has been unlucky in his room in the Metropole. It
is small, dark and dirty, and colder than mine. He was
feeling ill and his chest was hurting him, perhaps because of
his speech last night; but while I was there Kamenev rang
him up on the telephone, told him he had a car below, and
would he come at once to the Moscow Soviet to speak on
the international situation! Litvinov tried to excuse himself,
but it was no use, and he said to me that if I wanted to see
Kamenev I had better come along. We found Kamenev in
the hall, and after a few minutes in a little Ford car we were
at the Moscow Soviet. The Soviet meets in the small lecture
theatre of the old Polytechnic. When we arrived, a party
meeting was going on, and Kamenev, Litvinov, and I went
behind the stage to a little empty room, where we were
joined by a member of the Soviet whose name I forget.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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