whole surface of the globe in a grasp of universal exploitation, and which, on the other hand, shall crush with the utmost ferocity the working-class movement of revolt and revolution. It is pure fable to say that the League of Nations has been founded to promote the cause of peace. In actual fact it has a twofold aim: the ruthless exploitation of the proletariat throughout the world, of all colonies and of the colonial slaves; and the crushing of the incipient world revolution.
In the League of Nations, the U.S.A., which became inordinately rich during the war, plays the first fiddle. All the bourgeois States of Europe are now heavily indebted to America. The United States is very powerful for the additional reason that she has vast quantities of raw materials and fuel, and is a great wheat-producing country. She wishes to use these advantages in such a way as to make all her fellow robbers dependent on her. Infallibly she will become the leader of the League of Nations.
Very interesting is the way in which the United States veils its preeminently predatory policy behind a cloud of fine phrases. When, in pursuit of plunder, she entered the war, her watchwords were “the salvation of mankind,” “the rescue of the enslaved peoples,” and so on. It suited the United States that Europe should be disintegrated, should consist of dozens of petty lands, formally “independent” but substantially dependent upon America. This predatory interest was masked by an exalted phrase concerning “the right of the nations to self-determination.” The capitalist gendarmerie, the White Guards, and the White Police, which, according to Wilson’s plan, were to be ready everywhere to crush the revolution, would exist to ensure punishment for “breaches of the peace.” In the year 1919 all the imperialists suddenly became pacifically minded, and raised a clamour to the effect that the bolsheviks were the real imperialists, the true enemies of peace. Plans for the stifling of the revolution masqueraded as zeal for peace and