Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol4, 1920.pdf/141

The western world long ago realized that the secret of democratic and modern policy lies in the ability to organize political, economic and financial administration, that the best way of playing politics is to evolve efficient personel and introduce good administration into municipal, county, provincial and state affairs, that correct politics signifies the building up of thorough and smooth-running financial system, and finally that the wisest policy for the state is to inoculate in the citizens honest dealings and sound commerce at home and abroad which means confidence of foreign countries.

In other words statesmanship that is modern, as against medieval and romantic policy, the statesmanship of the new regime as against the old regime, is the policy of constant democratic work to be applied to problems of every day administration from the smallest unit to the largest. And that, gentlemen, is the problem of our eastern Slav policy and in the end that is the Russian problem.

Russia collapsed, because it was a medieval, undemocratic state, which had no conception of what democratic labor for the people means, what modern administrative and organizing statesmanship must be. That became evident in the course of the war, and that is the diagnosis today.

The Russian problem in reference to our policy during the past year presented itself also in a new form. In the first period of the bolshevik revolution the theory arose that the bolsheviks were created and maintained by the Germans, that Germans called forth bolshevism and inoculated the Russian state with it. There was also the conviction current that bolsheviks were ready to make up with the Germans and line up against the Allies. The fact that they actually made a peace with the Germans at Brest Litovsk and called the Allied policy just as imperialistic as the policy of Germany created naturally a strong dislike to Russia in the Allied lands and caused a fight against the bolshevism. Thus was shaped the policy of intervention in Russia, for the Allies were then persuaded that Germany would take advantage of the Russian situation, occupy tremendous territory which would save Germany economically and enable it to win the war. But from the beginning there was talk of two different kinds of intervention and questions were asked, whether it should be military or economic intervention. In view of developments in the bolshevist situation and in view of the fact that at first the bolsheviks by making peace with Germany did actually greatly aggravate the position of the Allies in the west, the Allies decided for military intervention in Russia, in order to set up Russia on its feet and recreate its front against the Central Powers. That was the original motive of intervention in Russia. At that time the idea of social revolution was not in the forefront, although the danger of bolshevist propaganda in some states did endanger victory of the Allies against the Central Powers which tried to turn the bolshevik revolution in Russia to their advantage.

In time the idea underlying intervention in Russia suffered a change. The Allies won the war on the western battlefields, and armistice turned away the attention of Europe from military problems toward economic questions. Social problems appeared in all the states in a threatening form, and the problem of bolshevism in Russia with reference to the other European states took on new shape. Russian bolsheviks believing in the spread of Marxist ideas and in universal revolution attempted to accelerate this revolution by propaganda and by terrorism. They started a propaganda in all directions for the purpose of causing internal collapse of Allied armies, and they became dangerous to the other European states. Thus arose the second phase of the intervention policy; it was not merely felt that steps must be taken against social revolution, but there was fear of the uncertain situation in Russia whose history showed that it could be a sphinx and that it may have in store disappointment to all who figured on some particular outcome there. In the Allied countries the danger discerned was not merely that social revolution might spread into them, but that Russian anarchy might be transformed into extreme reaction; and should a reactionary regime come to power in Germany, reaction in Russia would forget the alliances during the war and seek help from Germany. From that time the policy of intervention aimed not only at the prevention of the spread of social anarchy, but also to make impossible an alliance of reactionary Russia and Germany in the future.

But the allies, though they grasped correctly the situation in Russia, did not realize that the peculiar place of Russia in Europe made the success of intervention depend on certain conditions. Today it is no secret that every intervention in Russia would require hundreds of thousands soldiers; in fact it would make necessary again armies of millions and budgets of billions. And to intervene in Russia means even more than to place into the field great armies with all the immense apparatus which they must have; it postulates also exceptional organizing and administrative ability for the man who would want after the present break-down to build up a state in Russia with all its necessary administrative machinery. These things were not understood, and that is why England intervened in Archangel, the Allies in Siberia, why help was sent to the Caucasus; all that was a mere episode in the immensity of problems which is just what Russia is today. For that reason also the attempts of various Russian generals who want to solve the Russian muddle with arms are bound to fail. From the point