THE Allied and Associated Powers achieved extraordinary results in the World War, but since they dissolved their imposing coalition into the Entente and the Little Entente many a mischance has befallen them. It is true that from time to time it has been announced in the principal cities of the West and East that the states and peoples bound in these alliances were as much united as they ever were, but these more or less official assurances did not convince anybody, not even those who gave them out. Realities speak too loudly and show too clearly that harmony between the once victorious Allies now leaves a great deal to be desired.

No one can deny that it was America that brought about the decision in the World War. If ever a Power had the right to insist that its demands should be listened to, it was the United States, even if those desires served selfish interests and followed egoistic aims. Yet that was not the case. As the most recent publication of Wilson's memoirs shows, the United States, even at the time of the peace conference, had bent the bow too tensely, and Wilson's sickness alone is responsible for the sharper (nay, even the very sharpest) tone that triumphed.

What a tragic confession Wilson's revelations constitute! They let us understand why Americans want nothing more to do with Europe and especially nothing more with France. This indifference toward their former French companions in arms is in general developing into a harsher attitude, and the reception which the dismal tidings from

the Ruhr met on the other side of the ocean indicates that the sympathy of former years is no more. America has drawn out of the great alliance, and all the siren voices are of no avail. The United States remains cold toward them. America wants nothing more to do with Europe and will not longer coöperate.

Even England and Italy have at length ceased to be all fire and flame in their enthusiasm for a coalition of the Powers that once was held as a new holy alliance. Since Mussolini has been at the helm, Italy has taken no more than a Platonic share, so to speak, in all the measures that have been initiated by France. In the conflict over the Ruhr this became painfully obvious. As a concession to the desires of France and Belgium, Italy placed a few engineers at the disposal of the two states; but she made it emphatic that these Italian specialists were to stay distinctly in the background and take only a passive part in the proceedings, so that nothing more has been heard of them.

Mussolini had quite another end in view in his foreign politics than the annihilation of Germany. He frankly wished to substitute a compromise between France and Germany for the present purposeless and harmful campaign of invasion. But he avoided the direct initiative since he was coming into conflict with French foreign policy in another field. Paris attached the greatest importance to furthering the endeavors of the Little Entente. Italy, on the other hand, had so far blocked the so-called Slavic corridor, and the

agreement between Austria and Italy which had been reached during Dr. Seipel's recent visit to Rome appeared to have ended this plan forever.

Nevertheless the conflict of interests between France and Italy has not on that account reached such a point as the conflict in the relations between Great Britain and France has done today. The differences between France and England with regard to foreign politics in the West are quite as thoroughgoing as those in the East. The aspirations of the two states in the Orient, as everybody knows, have been in sharp contrast for a long time. So far as the West was concerned, the English Government was simply repeating itself, though in thoroughly diplomatic form, in expressing its objections to the manner in which France carried out her policy in the Ruhr. With little hesitation the English opposition gave utterance to the same opinions, and all parties of the English House of Commons, from the influential Labor Party to Asquith's wing of the Liberals and Lloyd George's almost Liberal section, are united in believing that the methods employed by France in the Ruhr are a failure and can ultimately end only in a check.

Lloyd George, indeed, has said as much in his series of articles; and it is clear that now when the contents of Wilson's memoirs are generally known, and the newspaper articles of the former Prime Ministers Lloyd George and Francisco Nitti are available, there can be no further doubt that among the four representatives of the most influential Powers three statesmen of the rank of Wilson, Lloyd George, and Nitti interpreted the Treaty of Peace in a way quite different from Poincaré.

It is no wonder, then, that there is genuine ill-humor in influential French political circles. This came to light

only a short time ago in a malicious article directed against England that can be traced back to the initiative of the French Foreign Office. The reverberations that this article aroused in London and the threatening speeches in the English House of Commons, however, induced the hot-heads in France to mix a little water with their wine.

A compromise was sought, and as a result the French Premier in spe, Loucheur, went to England and had a conference with Lloyd George; and the result of this journey to the man who a little while before had been attacked and reviled is that this temporary statesman-stopped talking in Parliament. What promises Lloyd George received and whether a new and more reasonable policy toward Germany will come into effect remains to be seen. If this is the case, France and Europe may become peaceful.

To-day France can no longer rely on powerful allies as she could during the war. Belgium alone stands by her through thick and thin. Even the Little Entente will no longer obey orders, and this may on the one hand be traced to its lack of unity and on the other hand to its weakness. The bonds that unite these little states and that were to continue to unite them are steadily growing looser. Poland is not flourishing, Austria has already lost her prosperity, Rumania has troubles of her own, and though tidings of the outbreak of revolution are exaggerated, nevertheless 'something is rotten in the State of Denmark' - perhaps a good deal. There is a gloomy satisfaction for Hungary in the sobering-down of the Rumanians of the Siebenbürgen district who formerly could not complain enough of 'Magyar tyranny,' but who now have to endure such a brutal rule that they sigh for the good old days of union with Hungary.

The Croats present the same picture, who for a long time were all anxiety for their 'liberation,' but who now are tearing themselves loose from Serbia and want to secure autonomy through revolution - exactly the kind of autonomy that they had before under the Hungarian crown, but which they did not know how to appreciate. To-day for the first time they know what they have lost. However, it need not be pointed out that neither Rumania nor Yugoslavia is able, under these conditions, to display much strength or force in foreign affairs. They have their hands too full with their domestic difficulties-political, economic, and social to be able to represent elements of strength in the Little Entente.

There remains Czechoslovakia, and in spite of her economic significance even this state stands on by no means firm ground. The Czechs had too big an appetite. Their country could not absorb extended territories and enormous minorities. It is only too intelligible, therefore, that President Masaryk is thinking of an agreement with Hungary, and in discussion of public affairs is suggesting now here,

now there, a serious rectification of the frontiers.

Just as France can no longer rely wholly and entirely upon the Entente, so Czechoslovakia can no longer support herself by means of the Little Entente. Cracks and crevices are to be seen everywhere. Political wisdom, therefore, urges all the statesmen of the Little Entente to seek an agreement with Hungary, and to have done at least with the system of pin pricks such as the recent proceedings in Rumania and the present arrests of Hungarian travelers in Yugoslavia. Hungary's neighboring states need peace as much as we do, and it is really high time for it if the divisions in the Entente and the Little Entente are to bring the participating states to practical results and are to mature into a cordial understanding.

Before everything else, however, our neighboring states must in their own interests no longer harshly put off Hungary's legitimate ambitions, but, submitting them to a fair test, bring them to completion. Not the defeated states alone, but the Entente and the Little Entente as well, have bitter need of peace the genuine kind.

For the first time since the revolution, the representatives of the Russian workers and peasants assemble to discuss the questions of their struggle without the participation of their sorely stricken comrade Lenin, who has showed them the way to battle and to victory. This fact lies like a cloud over the spirits of the party's members; yet never has the situation of the Soviet Republic and the task of the Russian Communist Party been so clear as at the present moment. And never before have the responsible representatives of the Russian Communist Party found it so easy to reach an agreement with regard to the course which the ship of the Communist Party must hold over the waves of revolution. Realities speak an unmistakable idiom.

The Congress meets in an international situation which tells the Russian workers clearly that the way of the Soviet Power and of the Russian Communist Party was the only right one. When the former meeting of the Communists gathered, the congress of the representatives of the bourgeois Governments, which was devoted to the subject of the revival of the world's economic system, was just beginning in Genoa. With the farsightedness that is characteristic of him, Comrade Lenin declared to the Eleventh Congress that the Genoa Conference, which had been loudly heralded by the press of the

international bourgeoisie, sought to impose a new burden under the guise of world economic restoration; that they would demand that Soviet Russia should impose this burden upon the shoulders of the workmen and the peasants, which would make it possible for the international bourgeoisie to fix their mastery upon the whole world. Comrade Lenin showed that the international bourgeoisie was divided against itself into struggling parts capable of common exploitation of the workers but incapable of restoring the shattered economic system of the world. A year has passed since the Genoa Conference. Its hero, Lloyd George, now has leisure to write long articles about the harmfulness of the Versailles Treaty Versailles Treaty which, be it said by the way, was the work of his own hands

and moreover to contend that the war may lead to the downfall of Europe.

Not only was there no agreement between international capital and Soviet Russia in Genoa and The Hague, but the greatest capitalist states in the world, as the events of the Ruhr make perfectly clear, were in no position to come to agreement among themselves, in order to restore the world's trade and to build it up on a capitalistic basis. When they called the Genoa Conference the capitalist lords cherished the hope that hunger would compel Soviet Russia to capitulate and to

impose a heavy burden on the Russian laboring classes, in order to secure the necessary credit. The harvest of the year 1922 and the measures taken by the Soviet régime against the famine make it possible for them to refuse all demands of the Allies.

Soviet Russia declared herself ready for great sacrifices in order to secure from foreign capital the means for the speediest possible restoration of the Russian national economic system and the alleviation of the situation of the

workers and peasants. It declined, however, to sell its birthright for a mess of pottage consisting of vague promises and to accept conditions that would burden the workers of Russia heavily for generations to come. Soviet Russia will wait until international capital convinces itself that the Soviets are not frightened by the financial blockade and will not sacrifice the fundamental strength of the October Revolution.

Soviet Russia was not inclined to hand back the factories and industrial plants into the private ownership of foreign capitalists and to burden the working masses with the Tsarist debts until international capital provided the means to hasten the reconstruction of Russia. But there is no doubt whatever that, if Soviet Russia begins economic revival with her capacities, international capital in its own interests, because of the search for new sources of raw material and new markets for export, will have to make an agreement that is advantageous for the Soviets also.

In spite of its gigantic military superiority, which is assured by its wealth and the tremendous preponderance of its military technique, which is related thereto, international capital has no strength for beginning international meddling anew. A fresh breathing-space is assured Soviet Russia

through the quarrels of the international robbers who are making ready for war one against another, and who can come to no agreement and cannot form a single military front against Russia. The war in the Ruhr, the illfeeling between France and England in Europe, Japanese and American conflict of interests in Eastern Asia, the chaos in China and India - all these are weights of lead upon the feet of international capital.

When, in March of 1921, the Congress of the Party decided to abandon the system of requisition and to levy taxes in kind, that is, to give the peasants economic freedom and the right to carry on trade with what they produced in excess of their own needs,

this was, to use Comrade Kamenev's striking expression, a renewal on a new basis of the October League between the proletariat and the peasants. In October 1917, the peasants rose with the working class against the Russian and international bourgeoisie and the large landowners, for the working class helped the peasants to get rid of the iron shackles of the World War and to drive the great landowners from the soil. For three years in succession the peasants adhered to this League, helping the working class to defend the Soviet Republic against attacks of the international and the Russian bourgeoisie. When the peasants shed their blood for the leadership of the proletariat, they knew that this blood was the price of keeping the great landowners away from the soil. Vexatious though the policy of requisitions and compulsory contributions was for them, the peasants never refused them, although the proletariat took their crops without complete reimbursement. This furnishing of bread was also part of the price of seizing the land of the gentry.

The wreck of intervention and the victory won in the peasants' war