The Bolshevik government could not be recognized: it gave no
guarantees of loyalty, and too often its representatives had violated
the rights of hospitality and intrigued through fanatics and excited
people to extend the revolution. Revolution and government are two
terms which cannot co-exist. But not to recognize the government of
the Soviet does not mean that the conditions of such recognition must
include that the War debt shall be guaranteed, and, worse still, the
pre-War debt, or that the gold resources and the metals of Russia
shall be given as a guarantee of that debt. This morality, exclusively
financial and plutocratic, cannot be the base of international
relations in a period in which humanity, after the sorrows of the War,
has the annoyance of a peace which no one foresaw and of which very
few in the early days understood the dangers.
Even when there was a tendency favourable to the recognition of the
republic of the Soviet, I was always decidedly against it. It is
impossible to recognize a State which bases all its relations on
violence, and which in its relations with foreign States seeks, or
has almost always sought, to carry out revolutionary propaganda.
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