Chapter IV: Part 4

MY DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: I have submitted to-day to the
Secretary of State my resignation as an assistant in the
Department of State, attaché to the American commission to
negotiate peace. I was one of the millions who trusted
confidently and implicitly in your leadership and believed
that you would take nothing less than "a permanent peace"
based upon "unselfish and unbiased justice." But our
Government has consented now to deliver the suffering
peoples of the world to new oppressions, subjections, and
dismemberments--a new century of war. And I can convince
myself no longer that effective labor for "a new world
order" is possible as a servant of this Government.

Russia, "the acid test of good will," for me as for you, has
not even been understood. Unjust decisions of the conference
in regard to Shantung, the Tyrol, Thrace, Hungary, East
Prussia, Danzig, the Saar Valley, and the abandonment of the
principle of the freedom of the seas make new international
conflicts certain. It is my conviction that the present
league of nations will be powerless-to prevent these wars,
and that the United States will be involved in them by the
obligations undertaken in the covenant of the league and in
the special understanding with France. Therefore the duty of
the Government of the United States to its own people and to
mankind is to refuse to sign or ratify this unjust treaty,
to refuse to guarantee its settlements by entering the
league of nations, to refuse to entangle the United States
further by the understanding with France.

That you personally opposed most of the unjust settlements,
and that you accepted them only under great pressure, is
well known. Nevertheless, it is my conviction that if you
had made your fight in the open, instead of behind closed
doors, you would have carried with you the public opinion of
the world, which was yours; you would have been able to
resist the pressure and might have established the "new
international order based upon broad and universal
principles of right and justice" of which you used to speak.
I am sorry that you did not fight our fight to the finish
and that you had so little faith in the millions of men,
like myself, in every nation who had faith in you.

Very sincerely, yours,

WILLIAM C. BULLITT.

To the honorable WOODROW WILSON,
President of the United States.

Senator KNOX. Did you ever get a reply to that letter?

Mr. BULLITT. I did not, sir. The only intimation I had in regard to it was that Mr. Close, secretary of the President, with whom I was lunching, said to me that the President had read my letter and had said that he would not reply. In connection with that I wrote Col. House a letter at the same time as follows:

MAY 17, 1919.

MY DEAR COL. HOUSE: Since you kindly lent me the text of the
proposed treaty of peace, I have tried to convince myself
that some good might come of it and that I ought to remain
in the service of the Department of State to labor for its
establishment.

It is with sincere regret that I have come to the conviction
that no good ever will issue from a thing so evil and that
those who care about a permanent peace should oppose the
signature and ratification of it, and of the special
understanding with France.

I have therefore submitted my resignation to the Secretary
of State and have written the appended note to the
President. I hope you will bring it to his attention; not
because he will care what I may think, but because I have
expressed the thoughts which are in the minds of many young
and old men in the commission--thoughts which the President
will have to reckon with when the world begins to reap the
crop of wars the seeds of which have here been sown.

I feel sure that you will agree that I am right in acting on
my conviction and I hope that this action will in no way
affect the relationship between us which has always been so
delightful and stimulating to me.

With my sincerest personal regards, I am, Very respectfully,
yours,

WILLIAM C. BULLITT.

To the honorable EDWARD M. HOUSE,
Hotel Crillon, Paris.

Senator KNOX. Did you get a reply to that?

Mr. BULLITT. Col. House sent for me, and after that we had a conversation. That was the only reply that I had. I had a conversation with Col. House on the whole matter, and we thrashed it all out.

Senator KNOX. Was anything said during this conversation which you feel willing or disposed to tell us, which will be important?

Mr. BULLITT. I made a record of the conversation. Inasmuch as the conversations which I had with various members of the commission on the occasion of my resignation touched on a number of important issues, I kept a record of those conversations, that is, those I had at the time when I resigned. They are the only conversations of which I made records, and I made them simply because we did deal more or less with the entire question of the peace treaty. On the other hand, they are personal conversations, and I hesitate to repeat them, unless the committee considers it particularly important.

Senator KNOX. I would not press you on the personal conversations which you had with Col. House after you resigned. I leave the matter to your own judgment. I wondered whether there might have been something which transpired which you would care to tell us; but I withdraw that suggestion. I should like to ask you this one question: I suppose your letter of resignation to Mr. Lansing was merely formal?

Mr. BULLITT. My letter of resignation to Mr. Lansing was a formal letter.

Senator KNOX. You certainly got a reply to that.

Mr. BULLITT. I did, sir. I wrote a formal letter and I got a formal reply, and the Secretary sent for me the same afternoon and explained that he only sent me a formal reply because it was necessary, because of the form in which I had put my resignation, and particularly because I had appended to my note my letter to the President. We then discussed various other matters in connection with the treaty.

The CHAIRMAN. Are you through?

Senator KNOX. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Bullitt, you put into the record or read here, I think, some extracts from the minutes of the Council of Ten?

Mr. BULLITT. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Were you present at any of these meetings?

Mr. BULLITT. I was not, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. The Council of Ten was the first body that was dealing with the treaty generally, the important body? It was not a special commission?

Mr. BULLITT. No, sir. It was the main body of the conference.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes; it was the main body, and was the one that subsequently became the Council of Five, and then the Council of Four, and I think at one time a Council of Three?

Mr. BULLITT. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, now, there were records of these meetings, were there not?

Mr. BULLITT. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you know what disposition was made of those records?

Mr. BULLITT. Mr. Chairman, there were a number of copies for each delegation, and I presume that there must be a number of copies in this country at the present time; perhaps not.

The CHAIRMAN. You say each delegate had a copy?

Mr. BULLITT. Each plenipotentiary had a copy, and the Secretary of the American Commission had a copy, I believe, and the assistant secretaries had copies; certainly one of the assistant secretaries, Mr. Leland Harrison; and Mr. Grew had a copy.

The CHAIRMAN. Did Mr. Lansing have copies while he served on the Council of Ten?

Mr. BULLITT. Yes, sir; well, I am quite sure that he did. I am sure that I have seen copies on the desk of the Secretary.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, they were furnished regularly to every member of the conference?

Mr. BULLITT. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. We have found some difficulty in getting them; that is the reason I asked.

Senator KNOX. I am informed--perhaps Mr. Bullitt can tell us--that there is a complete set of minutes in the hands of some individual in this country. Do you know anything about that--perhaps Auchincloss & Miller?

Mr. BULLITT. I could not be certain in regard to the matter, but I should certainly be under the impression that Mr. Auchincloss and Mr. Miller have copies of the minutes; perhaps not. Perhaps Mr. Auchincloss has left his with Col. House. He would have Col. House's copies. Perhaps they are in this country, perhaps not. But Mr. Auchincloss and Mr. Miller perhaps have those minutes in their files.

The CHAIRMAN. Undoubtedly there are a number, at least, of those records in existence.

Mr. BULLITT. Certainly, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. That must be the case.

Mr. BULLITT. Certainly, sir. Also records of the meetings of the American Commission.

Senator BRANDEGEE. Do you know whether or not they are in the State Department--any of these minutes or records in our State Department?

Mr. BULLITT. I should presume that in the normal course of events they would be certainly among Mr. Lansing's papers, which were very carefully kept. He had an excellent secretariat.

The CHAIRMAN. Did any member of our delegation, any member of the council of 10, express to you any opinions about the general character of this treaty?

Mr. BULLITT. Well, Mr. Lansing, Col. House, Gen. Bliss, and Mr. White had all expressed to me very vigorously their opinions on the subject.

The CHAIRMAN. Were they enthusiastically in favor of it?

Mr. BULLITT. I regret to say, not.

As I say, the only documents of the sort that I have are the memoranda of the discussions that I had after I resigned, when we thrashed over the whole ground.

The CHAIRMAN. Those memoranda of consultations that you had after you resigned you prefer not to publish? I am not asking you to do so.

Mr. BULLITT. I think it would be out of the way.

The CHAIRMAN. I quite understand your position. I only wanted to know--I thought it might be proper for you to say whether or not their opinions which you heard them express were favorable to the series of arrangements, I would call them, that were made for the consideration of this treaty.

Mr. BULLITT. It is no secret that Mr. Lansing, Gen. Bliss, and Mr. Henry White objected very vigorously to the numerous provisions of the treaty.

The CHAIRMAN. It is known that they objected to Shantung. That, I think, is public information. I do not know that it is public information that they objected to anything else.

Mr. BULLITT. I do not think that Secretary Lansing is at all enthusiastic about the league of nations as it stands at present. I have a note of a conversation with him on the subject, which, if I may, I will just read, without going into the rest of that conversation, because it bears directly on the issue involved.

This was a conversation with the Secretary of State at 2.30 on May 19. The Secretary sent for me. It was a long conversation, and Mr. Lansing in the course of it said:

Mr. Lansing then said that he personally would have strengthened greatly the judicial clauses of the league of nations covenant, making arbitration compulsory. He also said that he was absolutely opposed to the United States taking a mandate in either Armenia or Constantinople; that he thought that Constantinople should be placed under a local government, the chief members of which were appointed by an international committee.

This is a matter, it seems to me, of some importance in regard to the whole discussion, and therefore I feel at liberty to read it, as it is not a personal matter.

The CHAIRMAN. This is a note of the conversation made at the time?

Mr. BULLITT. This is a note which I immediately dictated after the conversation. [Reading:]

Mr. Lansing then said that he, too, considered many parts of
the treaty thoroughly bad, particularly those dealing with
Shantung and the league of nations. He said: "I consider
that the league of nations at present is entirely useless.
The great powers have simply gone ahead and arranged the
world to suit themselves. England and France in particular
have gotten out of the treaty everything that they wanted,
and the league of nations can do nothing to alter any of the
unjust clauses of the treaty except by unanimous consent of
the members of the league, and the great powers will never
give their consent to changes in the interests of weaker
peoples."

We then talked about the possibility of ratification by the Senate. Mr. Lansing said: "I believe that if the Senate could only understand what this treaty means, and if the American people could really understand, it would unquestionably be defeated, but I wonder if they will ever understand what it lets them in for." He expressed the opinion that Mr. Knox would probably really understand the treaty-- [Laughter.] May I reread it?

He expressed the opinion that Mr. Knox would probably really understand the treaty, and that Mr. Lodge would; but that Mr. Lodge's position would become purely political, and therefore ineffective.

[Laughter.]

The CHAIRMAN. I do not mind.

Mr. BULLITT (reading):

He thought, however, that Mr. Knox might instruct America in the real meaning of it.

[Laughter.]

The CHAIRMAN. He has made some very valuable efforts in the direction.

Mr. BULLITT. I beg to be excused from reading any more of these conversations.

Senator BRANDEGEE. We get the drift.

[Laughter.]

I want to ask one or two questions.

The CHAIRMAN. Go ahead.

Senator BRANDEGEE. Did you read any of these minutes of the meetings of the American commission?

Mr. BULLITT. Of the American commission itself?

Senator BRANDEGEE. Yes.

Mr. BULLITT. No, sir. I have on one or two occasions glanced at them but I never have read them carefully.

Senator BRANDEGEE. They were accessible to you at the time, were they?

Mr. BULLITT. They were, sir.

Senator BRANDEGEE. You stated, if I recall your testimony correctly, that when the proposition was made that the legislative bodies of the contracting parties should have representation in the assembly, the President objected to that?

Mr. BULLITT. The President--if I may explain again--approved in principle, but said that he did not see how the thing could be worked out, and he felt that the assembly of delegates, or whatever it is called in the present draft, gave sufficient representation to the peoples of the various countries.

Senator BRANDEGEE. Do you know what his objection was to the legislative bodies of the contracting parties having representation on the assembly?

Mr. BULLITT. The President believed, I think--in fact, it was so stated to me by Col. House, who discussed the matter with me--that it would make too unwieldy a central organ for the league.

Senator BRANDEGEE. Do you understand why it would be any more unwieldy if Congress should appoint the delegates than if the President should?

Mr. BULLITT. It would necessitate a larger central body if representation was to be given to the important political parties of the various countries. It would have necessitated a body of, say, 10 representatives from the United States--5 from the Republican party and 5 from the; Democratic Party, in the assembly of the league, which would become a large body.

Senator BRANDEGEE. The idea was that the political parties of the country should be represented?

Mr. BULLITT. Yes, the political viewpoints should be represented so that you would get some connection between the central assembly of the league and the true opinion of the countries.

Senator BRANDEGEE. When you went across to Paris on the _George Washington_ with the President do you know whether he had with him at that time any draft for a league of nations or any memorandum that he showed to you of discussed with you?

Mr. BULLITT. The President outlined to several of us one evening, or rather one afternoon, the conception he had at the time of the league of nations. I did not see any formal draft that he had, but the President made a statement before the council of 10, in one of these minutes from which I have been reading, stating that he had first--and in fact I think I know it from other sources--that he had first received the Phillimore report, that then it had been rewritten by Col. House and that he had rewritten Col. House's report, and after he had discussed his rewriting with Robert Cecil and Gen. Smuts, he had rewritten it again.

Senator BRANDEGEE. You stated substantially that the only part of the league draft which was laid before the Peace Conference which the President had his way about, was Article 10. Did you make some such statement as that?

Mr. BULLITT. Yes, sir.

Senator BRANDEGEE. The President stated to us that that was practically what he had submitted to the Niagara conference here when the ABC powers from South America were discussing the Mexican question. He had then considered it as an article for American use on this continent.

Do you know what the attitude of Gen Smuts was as to article 10 as proposed by the President?

Mr. BULLITT. I do not, sir. Again, full minutes of the discussions and conclusions reached of all these meetings of the committee on the league of nations were kept.

Senator BRANDEGEE. Did you read the various other plans that were proposed or suggested over there for a league of nations?

Mr. BULLITT. I have read some of them, sir.

Senator BRANDEGEE. Did the others have anything similar to what is now article 10 in the treaty pending in the Senate?

Mr. BULLITT. I really can not say. I am sorry, but I have forgotten. I should not care to testify on that.

Senator BRANDEGEE. Do you know from what you heard while you were there in your official capacity whether the other nations were anxious to have article 10 in the covenant for the league?

Mr. BULLITT. The French were not only anxious for it, but I believe were anxious greatly to strengthen it. They desired immediately a league army to be established, and I believe also to be stationed in Alsace-Lorraine and along the Rhine, in addition to article 10. I can not say for certain about the others.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Bullitt, we had before us at one of our hearings a representative of the Egyptian people. Do you know anything about that, when it was done, or any discussions about it? I mean the clauses that appear in regard to the British protectorate.

Mr. BULLITT. You mean our agreement to recognize the British protectorate in Egypt?

The CHAIRMAN. It was recognized by this treaty in those clauses.

Mr. BULLITT. Yes; but we gave a sort of assent before the treaty formally came out, did we not? I recall the morning it was done. It was handled by Sir William Wiseman, who was the confidential representative that Lloyd George and Balfour had constantly with Col. House and the President. He was a sort of extra confidential foreign office. It was all done, if I recall his statement correctly, in the course of one morning. The President was informed that the Egyptian nationalists were using his 14 points as meaning that the President thought that Egypt should have the right to control her own destinies, and therefore have independence, and that they were using this to foment revolution; that since the President had provoked this trouble by the 14 points, they thought that he should allay it by the statement that we would recognize the British protectorate, and as I remember Sir William Wiseman's statement to me that morning, he said that he had only brought up the matter that morning and that he had got our recognition of the British protectorate before luncheon.

The CHAIRMAN. The President made some public statement?

Mr. BULLITT. I am not certain in regard to the further developments of it. I recall that incident, that it was arranged through Sir William Wiseman, and that it took only a few minutes.

Senator KNOX. That was a good deal of time to devote to a little country like Egypt.

Mr. BULLITT. I do not know. You should know, sir, you have been Secretary of State.

Senator KNOX. We never chewed them up that fast.

Senator NEW. Mr. Bullitt, what, if anything, was said with reference to the Irish question, with which you are familiar?

Mr. BULLITT. At the conference? I do not believe the Irish question was ever brought up before the conference or discussed. There was considerable said on the side, attempts to let down the Walsh mission easily without antagonizing the Irish vote in this country. [Laughter.] I think that is the only consideration that Ireland received.

Senator NEW. There was a cheerful willingness to do that, was there not?

Mr. BULLITT. I think so.

The CHAIRMAN. Is there anything further that anybody desires to ask Mr. Bullitt? We are very much obliged to you indeed, Mr. Bullitt.

Mr. BULLITT. Mr. Chairman, if I may just say--I do not know whether it is a matter of first interest to the Senators or not--but on this trip with me to Russia there was Capt. Pettit, and at the same time the journalist, Lincoln Steffens, and I have documents which they prepared and which might be of interest to the committee.

The CHAIRMAN. If you will hand those to the stenographer, we will print them with your testimony.

Senator KNOX. What are your plans, Mr. Bullitt? What are you going to do in this country now?

Mr. BULLITT. I expect to return to Maine and fish for trout, where I was when I was summoned by the committee.

Senator BRANDEGEE. Did Mr. Steffens go to Russia with you?

Mr. BULLITT. He did.

The CHAIRMAN. He held no official position?

Mr. BULLITT. No.

Senator BRANDEGEE. Who advised him to go?

Mr. BULLITT. I did.

Senator BRANDEGEE. Is he in the country now?

Mr. BULLITT. I do not believe so. I believe he is still in Europe.

REPORT OF LINCOLN STEFFENS

(By order of the committee the report of Lincoln Steffens referred to is here printed in full in the record, as follows:)

REPORT OF LINCOLN STEFFENS

APRIL 2, 1919.

Politically, Russia has reached a state of equilibrium;
internally; for the present at least.

I think the revolution there is ended; that it has run its
course. There will be changes. There may be advances; there
will surely be reactions, but these will be regular, I
think; political and economic, but parliamentary, A new
center of gravity seems to have been found.

Certainly, the destructive phase of the revolution in Russia
is over. Constructive work has begun.

We saw this everywhere. And we saw order, and though we
inquired for them, we heard of no disorders. Prohibition is
universal and absolute. Robberies have been reduced in
Petrograd below normal of large cities. Warned against
danger before we went in, we felt safe. Prostitution has
disappeared with its clientele, who have been driven out by
the "no-work-no-food law," enforced by the general want and
the labor-card system. Loafing on the job by workers and
sabotage by upper-class directors, managers, experts and
clerks have been overcome. Russia has settled down to work.

The soviet form of government, which sprang up so
spontaneously all over Russia, is established.

This is not a paper thing; not an invention. Never planned,
it has not yet been written into the forms of law. It is not
even uniform. It is full of faults and difficulties; clumsy,
and in its final development it is not democratic. The
present Russian Government is the most autocratic government
I have ever seen. Lenin, head of the Soviet Government, is
farther removed from the people than the Tsar was, or than
any actual ruler in Europe is.

The people in a shop or an industry are a soviet. These
little informal Soviets elect a local soviet; which elects
delegates to the city or country (community) soviet; which
elects delegates to the government (State) soviet. The
government Soviets together elect delegates to the
All-Russian Soviet, which elects commissionaires (who
correspond to our Cabinet, or to a European minority). And
these commissionaires finally elect Lenin. He is thus five
or six removes from the people. To form an idea of his
stability, independence, and power, think of the process
that would have to be gone through with by the people to
remove him and elect a successor. A majority of all the
Soviets in all Russia would have to be changed in personnel
or opinion, recalled, or brought somehow to recognize and
represent the altered will of the people.

No student of government likes the soviet as it has
developed. Lenin himself doesn't. He calls it a
dictatorship, and he opposed it at first. When I was in
Russia in the days of Milyoukov and Kerensky, Lenin and the
Bolsheviks were demanding the general election of the
constituent assembly. But the Soviets existed then; they had
the power, and I saw foreign ambassadors blunder, and the
world saw Milyoukov and Kerensky fall, partly because they
would not, or could not, comprehend the nature of the
soviet; as Lenin did finally, when, against his theory, he
joined in and expressed the popular repudiation of the
constituent assembly and went over to work with the soviet,
the actual power in Russia. The constituent assembly,
elected by the people, represented the upper class and the
old system. The soviet was the lower class.

The soviet, at bottom, is a natural gathering of the working
people, of peasants, in their working and accustomed
groupings, instead of, as with us, by artificial
geographical sections.

Labor unions and soldiers' messes made up the Soviets in the
cities; poorer peasants and soldiers at the village inn were
the first Soviets in the country; and in the beginning, two
years ago, these lower class delegates used to explain to me
that the "rich peasants" and the "rich people" had their own
meetings and meeting places. The popular intention then was
not to exclude the upper classes from the government, but
only from the Soviets, which were not yet the same. But the
Soviets, once in existence, absorbed in their own class
tasks and their own problems, which the upper class had
either not understood or solved, ignored--no; they simply
forgot the council of empire and the Duma. And so they
discovered (or, to be more exact, their leaders discovered)
that they had actually all the power. All that Lenin and the
other Socialist leaders had to do to carry through their
class-struggle theory was to recognize this fact of power
and teach the Soviets to continue to ignore the assemblies
and the institutions of the upper classes, which, with their
"governments," ministries, and local assemblies, fell,
powerless from neglect.

The Soviet Government sprouted and grew out of the habits,
the psychology, and the condition of the Russian people. It
fitted them. They understand it. They find they can work it
and they like it. Every effort to put something else in its
place (including Lenin's) has failed. It will have to be
modified, I think, but not in essentials, and it can not be
utterly set aside. The Tsar himself, if he should come back,
would have to keep the Russian Soviet, and somehow rule over
and through it.

The Communist Party (dubbed "Bolshevik") is in power now in
the Soviet Government.

I think it will stay there a long time. What I have shown of
the machinery of change is one guaranty of communist
dominance. There are others. All opposition to the communist
government has practically ceased inside of Russia.

There are three organized opposition parties: Mencheviks,
Social Revolutionary Right, and Social Revolutionary Left.
The anarchists are not organized. The Social Revolutionary
Left is a small group of very anarchistic leaders, who have
hardly any following. The Mencheviks and the Social
Revolutionaries Right are said to be strong, but there is no
way of measuring their strength, for a very significant
reason.

These parties have stopped fighting. They are critical, but
they are not revolutionary. They also think the revolution
is over. They proposed, and they still propose eventually,
to challenge and oust the Communist Party by parliamentary
and political methods, not by force. But when intervention
came upon distracted Russia, and the people realized they
were fighting many enemies on many fronts, the two strong
opposing parties expressed their own and the public will to
stand by the party in power until the menace of foreign
invasion was beaten off. These parties announced this in
formal statements, uttered by their regular conventions; you
have confirmation of it in the memoranda written for you by
Martov and Volsky, and you will remember how one of them put
it to us personally:

"There is a fight to be made against the
Bolsheviks, but so long as you foreigners are
making it, we Russians won't. When you quit and
leave us alone, we will take up our burden again,
and we shall deal with the Bolsheviks. And we will
finish them. But we will do it with our people, by
political methods, in the Soviets, and not by
force, not by war or by revolution, and not with
any outside foreign help."

This is the nationalistic spirit, which we call patriotism,
and understand perfectly; it is much stronger in the new
than it was in the old, the Tsar's, Russia. But there is
another force back of this remarkable statement of a
remarkable state of mind.

All Russia has turned to the labor of reconstruction; sees
the idea in the plans proposed for the future; and is
interested--imaginatively.

Destruction was fun for a while and a satisfaction to a
suppressed, betrayed, to an almost destroyed people.
Violence was not in their character, however. The Russian
people, sober, are said to be a gentle people. One of their
poets speaks of them as "that gentle beast, the Russian
people," and I noticed and described in my reports of the
first revolution how patient, peaceable, and "safe" the mobs
of Petrograd were. The violence came later, with Bolshevism,
after the many attempts at counterrevolution, and with
vodka. The Bolshevik leaders regret and are ashamed of their
red terror. They do not excuse it. It was others, you
remember, who traced the worst of the Russian atrocities and
the terror itself to the adoption by the
counter-revolutionists of the method of assassination (of
Lenin and others), and most of all to the discovery by the
mobs of wine cellars and vodka stills. That the Russian
drunk and the Russian sober are two utterly different
animals, is well known to the Jews, to the Reactionaries,
and to the Russians themselves. And that is why this people
lately have not only obeyed; they have themselves ruthlessly
enforced the revolutionary prohibition decrees in every part
of Russia that we would inquire about and hear from.

The destructive spirit, sated, exhausted, or suppressed, has
done its work. The leaders say so--the leaders of all
parties.

There is a close relationship between the Russian people and
the new Russian leaders, in power and out. New men in
politics are commonly fresh, progressive, representative;
it's the later statesmen that damp the enthusiasm and sober
the idealism of legislators. In Russia all legislators, all,
are young or new. It is as if we should elect in the United
States a brand-new set of men to all offices, from the
lowest county to the highest Federal position, and as if the
election should occur in a great crisis, when all men are
full of hope and faith. The new leaders of the local Soviets
of Russia were, and they still are, of the people, really.
That is one reason why their autocratic dictatorship is
acceptable. They have felt, they shared the passion of the
mob to destroy, but they had something in mind to destroy.

The soviet leaders used the revolution to destroy the system
of organized Russian life.

While the mobs broke windows, smashed wine cellars, and
pillaged buildings to express their rage, their leaders
directed their efforts to the annihilation of the system
itself. They pulled down the Tsar and his officers; they
abolished the courts, which had been used to oppress them;
they closed shops, stopped business generally, and
especially all competitive and speculative business; and
they took over all the great industries, monopolies,
concessions, and natural resources. This was their purpose.
This is their religion. This is what the lower-class culture
has been slowly teaching the people of the world for 50
years: that it is not some particular evil, but the whole
system of running business and railroads, shops, banks, and
exchanges, for speculation and profit that must be changed.
This is what causes poverty and riches, they teach, misery,
corruption, vice, and war. The people, the workers, or their
State, must own and run these things "for service."

Not political democracy, as with us; economic democracy is
the idea; democracy in the shop, factory, business.
Bolshevism is a literal interpretation, the actual
application of this theory, policy, or program. And so, in
the destructive period of the Russian revolution, the
Bolshevik leaders led the people to destroy the old system,
root and branch, fruit and blossom, too. And apparently this
was done. The blocks we saw in Petrograd and Moscow of
retail shops nailed up were but one sign of it. When we
looked back of these dismal fronts and inquired more deeply
into the work of the revolution we were convinced that the
Russians have literally and completely done their job. And
it was this that shocked us. It is this that has startled
the world; not the atrocities of the revolution, but the
revolution itself.

The organization of life as we know it in America, in the
rest of Europe, in the rest of the world, is wrecked and
abolished in Russia.

The revolution didn't do it. The Tsar's Government had
rotted it. The war broke down the worn-out machinery of it;
the revolution has merely scrapped it finally.

The effect is hunger, cold, misery, anguish, disease--death
to millions. But worse than these--I mean this--was the
confusion of mind among the well and the strong. We do not
realize, any of us--even those of us who have
imagination--how fixed our minds and habits are by the ways
of living that we know. So with the Russians. They
understood how to work and live under their old system; it
was not a pretty one; it was dark, crooked, and dangerous,
but they had groped around in it all their lives from
childhood up. They could find their way in it. And now they
can remember how it was, and they sigh for the old ways. The
rich emigres knew whom to see to bribe for a verdict, a
safe-conduct, or a concession; and the poor, in their
hunger, think now how it would be to go down to the market
and haggle, and bargain, from one booth to another, making
their daily purchases, reckoning up their defeats and
victories over the traders. And they did get food then. And
now--it is all gone. They have destroyed all this, and
having destroyed it they were lost, strangers in their own
land.

This tragedy of transition was anticipated by the leaders of
the revolution, and the present needs were prepared for in
the plans laid for reconstruction.

Lenin has imagination. He is an idealist, but he is a
scholar, too, and a very grim realist. Lenin was a
statistician by profession. He had long been trying to
foresee the future of society under socialism, and he had
marked down definitely the resources, the machinery, and the
institutions existing under the old order, which could be
used in the new. There was the old Russian communal land
system, passing, but standing in spots with its peasants
accustomed to it. That was to be revived; it is his solution
of the problem of the great estates. They are not to be
broken up, but worked by the peasants in common. Then there
was the great Russian Cooperative (trading) Society, with
its 11,000,000 families before the war; now with 17,000,000
members. He kept that. There was a conflict; it was in
bourgeoise hands but it was an essential part of the
projected system of distribution, so Lenin compromised and
communist Russia has it. He had the railroads, telegraph,
telephone already; the workers seized the factories, the
local Soviets the mines; the All-Russian Soviet, the banks.
The new government set up shops--one in each
neighborhood--to dole out not for money, but on work
tickets, whatever food, fuel, and clothing this complete
government monopoly had to distribute. No bargaining, no
display, no advertising, and no speculation. Everything one
has earned by labor the right to buy at the cooperative and
soviet shops is at a fixed, low price, at the established
(too small.) profit--to the government or to the members of
the cooperative.

Money is to be abolished gradually. It does not count much
now. Private capital has been confiscated, most of the rich
have left Russia, but there are still many people there who
have hidden away money or valuables, and live on them
without working. They can buy food and even luxuries, but
only illegally from peasants and speculators at the risk of
punishment and very high prices. They can buy, also, at the
government stores, at the low prices, but they can get only
their share there, and only on their class or work tickets.
The class arrangement, though transitory and temporary--the
aim is to have but one class--is the key to the idea of the
whole new system.

There are three classes. The first can buy, for example,
1-1/2 pounds of bread a day; the second, three-quarters of a
pound; the third, only one-quarter of a pound; no matter how
much money they may have. The first class includes soldiers,
workers in war, and other essential industries, actors,
teachers, writers, experts, and Government workers of all
sorts. The second class is of all other sorts of workers.
The third is of people who do not work--the leisure class.
Their allowance is, under present circumstances, not enough
to live on, but they are allowed to buy surreptitiously from
speculators on the theory that the principal of their
capital will soon be exhausted, and, since interest, rent,
and profits--all forms of unearned money--are abolished,
they will soon be forced to go to work.

The shock of this, and the confusion due to the strange
details of it, were, and they still are, painful to many
minds, and not only to the rich. For a long time there was
widespread discontent with this new system. The peasants
rebelled, and the workers were suspicious. They blamed the
new system for the food shortage, the fuel shortage, the
lack of raw materials for the factories. But this also was
anticipated by that very remarkable mind and will--Lenin. He
used the State monopoly and control of the press, and the
old army of revolutionary propagandists to shift the blame
for the sufferings of Russia from the revolutionary
government to the war, the blockade, and the lack of
transportation. Also, he and his executive organization were
careful to see that, when the government did get hold of a
supply of anything, its arrival was heralded, and the next
day it appeared at the community shops, where everybody
(that worked) got his share at the low government price. The
two American prisoners we saw had noticed this, you
remember. "We don't get much to eat," they said, "but
neither do our guards or the other Russians. We all get the
same. And when they get more, we get our share."

The fairness of the new system, as it works so far, has won
over to it the working class and the poorer peasants. The
well-to-do still complain, and very bitterly sometimes.
Their hoardings are broken into by the government and by the
poverty committees, and they are severely punished for
speculative trading. But even these classes are moved
somewhat by the treatment of children. They are in a class
by themselves: class A,--I. They get all the few
delicacies--milk, eggs, fruit, game, that come to the
government monopoly--at school, where they all are fed,
regardless of class. "Even the rich children," they told us,
"they have as much as the poor children." And the children,
like the workers, now see the operas, too, the plays, the
ballets, the art galleries--all with instructors.

The Bolsheviks--all the Russian parties--regard the
communists' attitude toward children as the symbol of their
new civilization.

"It is to be for the good of humanity, not business," one of
them, an American, said, "and the kids represent the future.
Our generation is to have only the labor, the joy, and the
misery of the struggle. We will get none of the material
benefits of the new system, and we will probably never all
understand and like it. But the children--it is for them and
their children that we are fighting, so we are giving them
the best of it from the start, and teaching them to take it
all naturally. They are getting the idea. They are to be our
new propagandists."

The idea is that everybody is to work for the common good,
and so, as the children and the American prisoners note,
when they all produce more, they all get more. They are
starving now, but they are sharing their poverty. And they
really are sharing it. Lenin eats, like everybody else--only
one meal a day--soup, fish, bread, and tea. He has to save
out of that a bit for breakfast and another bit for supper.
The people, the peasants, send him more, but he puts it in
the common mess. So the heads of this government do not have
to imagine the privations of the people; they feel them. And
so the people and the government realize that, if ever
Russia becomes prosperous, all will share in the wealth,
exactly as they share in the poverty now. In a word, rich
Russia expects to become a rich Russian people.

This, then, is the idea which has begun to catch the
imagination of the Russian people. This it is that is making
men and women work with a new interest, and a new incentive,
not to earn high wages and short hours, but to produce an
abundance for all. This is what is making a people, sick of
war, send their ablest and strongest men into the new,
high-spirited, hard-drilled army to defend, not their
borders, but their new working system of common living.

And this is what is making Lenin and his sobered communist
government ask for peace. They think they have carried a
revolution through for once to the logical conclusion. All
other revolutions have stopped when they had revolved
through the political phase to political democracy. This one
has turned once more clear through the economic phase to
economic democracy, to self-government in the factory, shop,
and on the land, and has laid a foundation for universal
profit sharing, for the universal division of food, clothes,
and all goods, equally among all. And they think their
civilization is working on this foundation. They want time
to go on and build it higher and better. They want to spread
it all over the world, but only as it works, As they told us
when we reminded them that the world dreaded their
propaganda:

"We are through with the old propaganda of
argument. All we ask now is to be allowed to prove
by the examples of things well done here in
Russia, that the new system is good. We are so
sure we shall make good, that we are willing to
stop saying so, to stop reasoning, stop the
haranguing, and all that old stuff. And especially
are we sick of the propaganda by the sword. We
want to stop fighting. We know that each country
must evolve its own revolution out of its own
conditions and in its own imagination. To force it
by war is not scientific, not democratic, not
socialistic. And we are fighting now only in
self-defense. We will stop fighting, if you will
let us stop. We will call back our troops, if you
will withdraw yours. We will demobilize. We need
the picked organizers and the skilled workers now
in the army for our shops, factories, and farms.
We would love to recall them to all this needed
work, and use their troop trains to distribute our
goods and our harvests, if only you will call off
your soldiers and your moral, financial, and
material support from our enemies, and the enemies
of our ideals. Let every country in dispute on our
borders self-determine its own form of government
and its own allegiance.

"But you must not treat us as a conquered nation.
We are not conquered. We are prepared to join in a
revolutionary, civil war all over all of Europe
and the world, if this good thing has to be done
in this bad way of force. But we would prefer to
have our time and our energy to work to make sure
that our young, good thing is good. We have proved
that we can share misery, and sickness, and
poverty; it has helped us to have these things to
share, and we think we shall be able to share the
wealth of Russia as we gradually develop it. But
we are not sure of that; the world is not sure.
Let us Russians pay the price of the experiment;
do the hard, hard work of it; make the
sacrifice--then your people can follow us, slowly,
as they decide for themselves that what we have is
worth having."

That is the message you bring back, Mr. Bullitt. It is your
duty to deliver it. It is mine to enforce it by my
conception of the situation as it stands in Russia and
Europe to-day.

It seems to me that we are on the verge of war, a new war, a
terrible war--the long-predicted class war--all over Europe.

The peace commission, busy with the settlement of the old
war, may not see the new one, or may not measure aright the
imminent danger of it. Germany is going over, Hungary has
gone, Austria is coming into the economic revolutionary
stage. The propaganda for it is old and strong in all
countries: Italy, France, Spain, Belgium, Norway,
Sweden--you know. All men know this propaganda. But that is
in the rear. Look at the front.

Russia is the center of it. Germany, Austria, Hungary are
the wings of the potential war front of--Bolshevism.

And Russia, the center, has made a proposition to you for
peace, for a separate peace; made it officially; made it
after thought; made it proudly, not in fear, but in pitiful
sympathy with its suffering people and for the sake of a
vision of the future in which it verily believes. They are
practical men--those that made it. You met them. We talked
with them. We measured their power. They are all idealists,
but they are idealists sobered by the responsibility of
power. Sentiment has passed out of them into work--hard
work. They said they could give one year more of starvation
to the revolution, but they said it practically, and they
prefer to compromise and make peace. I believe that, if we
take their offer, there will be such an outcry of rage and
disappointment from the Left Socialists of Germany, Italy,
France, and the world, that Lenin and Trotsky will be
astonished. The Red Revolution--the class war--will be
broken, and evolution will have its chance once more in the
rest of Europe. And you and I know that the men we met in
Moscow see this thus, and that they believe the peace
conference will not, can not, see it, but will go on to make
war and so bring on the European revolution.

But your duty, our duty, is to point out this opportunity,
and to vouch for the strength and the will and the character
of Lenin and the commissaires of Russia to make and keep the
compact they have outlined to you. Well, this is the
briefest way in which I can express my full faith:

Kautsky has gone to Moscow. He has gone late; he has gone
after we were there. He will find, as we found, a careful,
thoughtful, deliberate group of men in power; in too much
power; unremovable and controlling a state of monopoly,
which is political, social, economic, financial; which
controls or directs all the activities, all the fears, all
the hopes, all the aspirations of a great people. Kautsky
will speak to revolutionary Russia for revolutionary
Germany, and for a revolutionary Europe. There will be an
appeal in that; there will be a strong appeal in that to the
revolutionary Russian commissaires. But, if I am any judge
of character, Lenin and his commissaires will stand by their
offer to us until Paris has answered, or until the time set
for the answer--April 10--shall have passed. Then, and not
until then, will Kautsky receive an answer to his appeal
for--whatever it is the Germans are asking.

It is not enough that you have delivered your message and
made it a part of the record of the peace conference. I
think it is your duty to ask the fixed attention of your
chiefs upon it for a moment, and to get from them the
courtesy of a clear, direct reply to Russia before April 10.

REPORTS OF CAPT. W.W. PETTIT

(The reports of Capt. Pettit are here printed in full, as follows:)

REPORTS OF CAPT, W.W. PETTIT

I left Petrograd on March 31. During the past three weeks I have
crossed the Finnish border six times and have been approximately
two weeks in Petrograd. I have met Tchitcherin, Litvinov, and
most of the important personages in the communist government of
Petrograd (including Bill Shatov, chief of police).

Briefly, my opinion of the Russian situation is as follows:
In Petrograd I presume the present communist government has
a majority of the working-men behind it, but probably less
than half of the total population are members of the
communist party. However, my conclusions are based on
conversations with not only communists, but also many
opponents of the communist government, members of the
aristocracy, business men, and foreigners, and I am
persuaded that a large majority of the population of
Petrograd if given a choice between the present government
and the two alternatives, revolution or foreign
intervention, would without hesitation take the present
government. Foreign intervention would unite the population
in opposition and would tend to greatly emphasize the
present nationalist spirit. Revolution would result in
chaos. (There is nowhere a group of Russians in whom the
people I have talked with have confidence. Kolchak, Denikin,
Yudenvitch, Trepov, the despicable hordes of Russian
emigrees who haunt the Grand Hotel, Stockholm; the Socithans
House, Helsingfors; the offices of the peace commission in
Paris, and squabble among themselves as to how the Russian
situation shall be solved; all equally fail to find many
supporters in Petrograd.) Those with whom I have talked
recognize that revolution, did it succeed in developing a
strong government, would result in a white terror comparable
with that of Finland. In Finland our consul has a record of
12,500 executions in some 50 districts, out of something
like 500 districts, by the White Guard. In Petrograd I have
been repeatedly assured that the total Red executions in
Petrograd and Moscow and other cities was at a maximum
3,200.

It may seem somewhat inconsistent for the Russian
bourgeoisie to oppose allied intervention and at the same
time fail to give whole-hearted support to the present
government. They justify this attitude on the grounds that
when the two great problems of food and peace are solved the
whole population can turn itself to assisting the present
régime in developing a stable efficient government. They
point to the numerous changes which have already been
introduced by the present communist government, to the
acknowledgment that mistakes have been made to the ease of
securing introduction of constructive ideas under the
present régime. All these facts have persuaded many of the
thinking people with whom I have talked to look to the
present government in possibly a somewhat modified form as
the salvation of Russia.