Now–editoril Notes

LEON TROTSKY has been ordered to leave France on the ground that “he has not observed the duties of neutrality to which he took engagement when the hospitality of France was accorded him.” Rumors have been broadcast that Trotsky was busy preparing to create a “Fourth International” for world revolution.

Trotsky thus figures again prominently in the press of the world and France is extremely excited. Perhaps the whole “Fourth International” plot has been concocted at this particular moment to furnish the French people with a new affair –the Trotsky Affair in order to make them forget the embarrassing Stavisky scandal.

That Trotsky, the advocate of “permanent revolution,” is irritated by the manner in which he is being treated by Stalin and the Third International is quite natural. But judging by the characteristic traits that marked Leon Trotsky’s achievements in the past, it does not seem probable that he is now seriously engaged upon forming new organizations to foment world revolution. Trotsky is a great orator and a brilliant writer. Since he was exiled by the very government he had helped to create, he had to limit his activities to his writings. He has produced several books of lasting value and has written a series of keen and illuminating articles for capitalist magazines and newspapers. In Russia his following has diminished to the vanishing point, according to recent observers. He undoubtedly still has numerous admires in many lands, who remember him not only as the brilliant agitator, pamphleteer and historian, but also as the organizer of the Red Army. But what Trotsky could accomplish in Russia, together with Lenin who was idolized and followed blindly by the bolsheviki, he could not do today. He could not form anything more than a paper organization that would be opposed this time not only by the capitalists and the moderate socialists but also by the Soviets.

It may be that Trotsky welcomes this sudden worldwide publicity afforded him by France. For Trotsky as an organizer of “permanent revolution” was quite forgotten by this time.

I recall my interview with Leon Trotsky in Petrograd, in March, 1918, when he was Commissar for Foreign Affairs. I remember some of his extremely shrewd, almost prophetic remarks on world affairs. At that time Lenin and Trotsky and other bolshevist leaders were generally described as German agents because the Imperial German government had permitted a special “sealed” train, carrying Lenin and his comrades, to go through Germany to Russia during the war, shortly after the Russian revolution.

“Russia’s position is more affected now by foreign than internal affairs,” Trotsky said. “We have been called German agents, but the Allied representatives in Russia did everything to spoil things for us and for themselves, and in that way they helped Germany more than we did. Certain members of the French and British Missions blundered by supporting the Polish legions, the Ukranians, by stirring up the Roumanian armies against us, but the Polish legions, the Ukranians and Roumanian all helped Germany. The American representative took no initiative in any of these matters, but he permitted a number of foolish things to be done. We have been called German agents, but I can assure you that Germany has no greater enemy than our party.”

In answer to my question as to how long the Brest Litovak peace of the Soviets with Germany would last, Trotsky remarked:

“We are continuing the war against Germany in the Ukraine right now. Neither we nor Germany consider our peace of long duration.”

And when I asked him how he visualized bolshevism would work out side by side with German imperialism, he replied:

“The Russia of the Soviets and militaristic Germany are absolutely incompatible.”

During my visit to Russia in 1918 I succeeded in obtaining the original letter addressed by Trotsky to Lenin and Stalin, written from the Brest-Litovsk Peace conference, in which Trotsky gave his reasons why he refused to sign the separate peace with the German militarists, and in which he also predicted the coming of the German revolution. Leon Trotsky was the only one among the leading bolsheviki who opposed the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty, stating, “We cannot participate in the looting war of the Allies, nor can we sign the looting peace with Germany.”

In March, 1918, there was a considerable campaign against the Jews in various countries because a number of Jews played a conspicuous role in Soviet Russia at the time. During my interview with Trotsky, I asked him whether he did not think that anti-Semitism would grow more intense in Russia because of the activities of some of the Jews among the bolsheviki. To this Trotsky replied:

“Anti-Semitism is being eradicated in Russia. The masses are not anti-Semitic. Only the remnants of the bourgeoisie are. The Soviet government will deal drastically with this menace. The fact that Jews are elected to the highest offices in the Soviet government of workers and peasants shows that there in no anti-Semitism in the Russian masses.”