All sorts of rumors found their way to us in Petrograd. German soldiers arriving from the front said they had deserted the army and, with several thousand others, were encamped in a wood behind the German lines, where, equipped with machine-guns, they were defying a German advance on Russia. Strikes were breaking out in Austria and Germany. In Petrograd the third congress of the Council of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Deputies met on January 23. On the 27th Leon Trotzky made his report. It showed that at last the Germans, convinced that resistance upon the part of the Russians was impossible, were unmasking their real aims. “Practically,” he said, “the German terms mean that the governments of Austria and Germany take into their own hands the destiny of the Poles, the Letts, the Lithuanians, and the Esthonians.” Trotzky drew a comparison between the present peace aims, and the peace terms of the Reichstag resolution of July supporting a peace without indemnities and annexations, and the peace terms of the Germany of December 25, which lured the Russians to trust the democratic utterances of the enemy. He showed that the new frontiers were planned not only to subjugate all the people within the conquered territories, but to make further German aggression easy. “The whole German argument was based on the assumption that the Russian government would understand, but be silent and grateful to the Germans for saving their faces by giving a mock-democratic character to their peace,” said Trotzky. “The bourgeois governments can sign any kind of a peace; the governments of the Soviet can not.” He declared that the Ukrainian Rada was at that moment trying to make a separate peace, and insisted that, whatever happened, he would not sign a “non-democratic peace.” Trotzky sparred for time. He knew that his government could not live surrounded by countries practising a different social creed. He counted on the spread of revolt simultaneously in the Ukraine, in Finland, in Austria, and in Germany. He did not foresee the German-inspired invitation to German troops to put down revolution in Finland, Ukraine, and the Baltic provinces. On the ninth of February the Ukraine, upon which France had banked to keep Russia from making a peace, concluded a separate peace herself. The following day the Soviet government announced its withdrawal from the war, and also its determination not to sign an annexationist treaty, declaring its firm belief that the workers of Germany and Austria would not permit any new offensive against the workers of Russia. Five days later Germany announced her intention to resume military operations against Russia. On the 18th, to the amazement of the populace behind the Russian line, the German troops along the entire front advanced.