_British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs_
[FROM AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN PARLIAMENT MARCH 14, 1918]
The inference that Russia would have been kept in the war if we had
announced that we proposed to go in for the status quo ante and
readjustments is wrong. Pronouncements made by Russian statesmen always
included self-determination. Self-determination can never be squared
with mere adjustments. It may be that self-determination might
conceivably receive a large measure of fulfillment, I agree, up to a
certain point, but that Russian statesmen by their declarations have
materially limited the scope of the war I believe to be inaccurate. But
whether accurate or not, one is entirely misrepresenting the political
and social forces of Russia if he thinks that the reason Russia went out
of the war was that our war aims were not publicly or semi-publicly
reconsidered in concert with the Allies.
I do not profess to have a remedy for the misfortunes that have
occurred--as I think to civilization itself--from the fact that the
Russian revolution occurred in the middle of a European war. I welcome
the change from autocracy to what we hoped and still hope, what we
believed and still believe, is going to be a reign of ordered liberty.
But the revolution, unfortunately, came at a time when Russia was weary
with the sacrifices of a great war, and it was mixed up and almost
overshadowed on its political side by the pacifist influences which were
allowed to reign uncontrolled in the army and navy and all the other
forces which might and should have been co-ordinated to resist the
common enemy.
There are resemblances between the Russian revolution and the French
Revolution, but from our point of view, and from the point of view of
the war and of how we are to secure in the future the freedom of small
nationalities, and how we are to save the world from the domination of
one overgreedy power, from that point of view no greater misfortune
could have occurred than the coincidence between the Russian revolution
and the fact that a war was being conducted in which Russia was one of
the great Allies. I personally am an optimist about Russia, but I am not
an optimist about the immediate future of Russia, because it seems to me
that difficulties are thrown in Russia's way by the fact that the war
raged before the revolution. Russia is only nominally out of the war at
the present time, but is still suffering from the invasion of her
enemies. The French Revolution was associated with great military
operations. It ended in the production of an army whose fiery efficiency
was the wonder of Europe and which overturned all the decrepit
monarchies in the Central European States. Contrast that with what has
happened in Russia since the revolution. There is not a single fighting
instrument possessed by Russia which the Russian revolutionaries have
not deliberately but absolutely and completely destroyed.