“Once more the German working class in this threatened hour has shown itself insufficiently determined to stay the criminal hand of its own militarism. We had no other choice but to accept the conditions of German imperialism until a revolution changes or cancels them. The German government is not hastening to reply to us, evidently aiming to seize as many important positions in our territory as possible. The enemy has occupied Dvinsk, Werder, and Lutsk, and is continuing to strangle by hunger the most important centers of the Revolution. We even now are convinced firmly that the German working classes will rise against the attempts of the ruling classes to stifle the Revolution, but we can not predict with certainty when this will occur. The German imperialists may hesitate at nothing for the purpose of destroying the authority of the councils and taking the land from the peasants.” The Commissaries called on all loyal councils and army organizations to use all efforts to recreate the army. The next day Kühlmann submitted a new offer of peace, imposing yet more drastic terms upon the broken country, and demanded that it be accepted within forty-eight hours. Again Lenin insisted that it must be accepted. “Their knees are on our chests and our position is hopeless,” he said. “This peace must be accepted as a respite enabling us to prepare a decisive resistance to the bourgeoisie and imperialists. The proletariat of the whole world will come to our aid. Then we shall renew the fight. All the bourgeoisie in Russia is jubilant at the approach of the Germans. Only a blind man, or men infatuated by phrases, can fail to see that the policy of a revolutionary war without an army is water in the bourgeois mill. In the bourgeois papers there is already exaltation in view of the impending overthrow of the Soviet government by the Germans. We are compelled to submit to a distressing peace.” Trotzky was absent from this meeting, and the Central Executive Committee, by a vote of a hundred and twelve against eighty-four, accepted Lenin’s view; and the decision was telegraphed to the German government. “Surely now hostilities would cease!” thought the Russians. A new peace deputation was elected. Trotzky, who favored fighting, was displaced as Foreign Minister. The German government did not reply to the Russian acceptance. The German troops kept marching on. The Soviet government called upon the people: “Resistance becomes the principal task of the Revolution.” The workers filled the ranks of the volunteer “Red Army,” led by officers of the bourgeoise. There was hardly a factory worker left in Petrograd, and, untrained as they were, they were soldiers because they had a cause. The German advance was checked at Pskoff. The Red Guards recaptured Orsha. The regular troops, an uncomprehending horde of bewildered and dilapidated soldiers, fled in panic before their “German brothers,” looting and pillaging as they went.