Shooting Stars (19 page)

However, it is a great responsibility to take such a step as suddenly entering into negotiations with imperial Germany, a country that he has threatened and abused over and over again in his writings. For in the light of all previous morality it is, naturally, high treason to enter and pass through an enemy country in the middle of war, and do so with the approval of the enemy’s General Staff. Of course Lenin must know that it means he is initially compromising his own party and his own cause, that he will be suspect and sent back to Russia as the hired and paid agent of the German government, and that if he realizes his programme of bringing instant peace, he will always be blamed by history for standing in the way of the real, victorious peace of Russia. And of course not only the milder revolutionaries but also most of those who think as he does are horrified when he announces his readiness, if necessary, to take this dangerous and compromising course of action. They point out in dismay that negotiations were begun long ago by the Swiss Social Democrats to bring about the return of Russian revolutionaries by the legal and neutral method of an exchange of prisoners. But Lenin knows how
tedious that course of action will be, how ingeniously and intentionally the Russian government will postpone their return
ad infinitum
, while he realizes that every day and every hour counts. He sees only the aim, while the others, being less cynical and less audacious, do not dare to decide on a course of action that by all existing laws and opinions is treacherous. But Lenin has made up his own mind, and takes on himself responsibility for negotiating with the German government.

It is for the very reason that Lenin knows how much attention this step will arouse, and how challenging it is, that he acts as openly as possible. On his behalf, the Swiss trades union secretary Fritz Platten goes to see the German ambassador, who had already negotiated in general with the Russian emigrants, and lays Lenin’s conditions before him. For, as if that insignificant, unknown fugitive could already guess at his future authority, Lenin is not asking the German
government
for something, but stipulating the conditions on which the travellers would be ready to accept the co-operation of the German government. The railway carriage, he insists, must have an acknowledged right to extraterritoriality. There must be no checking of passports or persons at either the start or the end of the journey. The travellers will pay for their journey themselves, at the normal rates. No one would leave the carriage either if ordered to do so or acting on their own initiative. The minister, Romberg, passes these messages
on. They reach the hands of Ludendorff, who undoubtedly approves them, although there is not a word in his memoirs about what was perhaps the most important decision of his life. The ambassador tries to make changes to many details, for Lenin has intentionally phrased the document so
ambiguously
that not only Russians but also an Austrian like Radek could travel in the train without any inspection. Like Lenin himself, however, the German government is in a hurry—for on that day, the 5th of April, the United States of America declares war on Germany.

And thus, on 6th April at midday, Fritz Platten receives the memorable decision: “This matter approved in the desired sense.” On 9th April 1917, at two-thirty, a small, poorly dressed group carrying suitcases leave the Zähringerhof Restaurant on their way to Zürich Station. There are
thirty-two
of them in all, including women and children. Of the men, only the names of Lenin, Sinovyev and Radek are still known. They have eaten a modest lunch together, they have all signed a document saying that they are aware of the report in the French newspaper,
Le Petit Parisien
, that the Russian provisional government intends to treat the party travelling through Germany as guilty of high treason. They have signed in clumsy, awkward handwriting, saying that they take full responsibility for this journey upon themselves and have approved all the conditions. Quiet and determined, they now prepare for their historic journey.

Their arrival at the station attracts no attention. No
reporters
or photographers have turned up. Who in Switzerland knows this Herr Ulyanov, the man in the crumpled hat, shabby
coat and ridiculously heavy mountain shoes (he takes them as far as Sweden), in the middle of a group of men and women laden with baskets, silently and inconspicuously looking for seats in the train? They appear the same as anyone else on a walking tour: people from the Balkan states, Ruthenia and Romania often stop here in Zürich for a couple of hours’ rest, sitting on their wooden cases, before going on to France and the coast, and so overseas. The Swiss Socialist Party, which has also approved of the journey, has sent no representative; only a couple of Russians have come to give the travellers a little food and messages to take to the homeland, and a few also to try to dissuade Lenin, at the last minute, from going on this “pointless, treacherous journey”. But the decision has been taken. At ten past three the guard of the train gives the signal. And the train rolls away to Gottmadingen, the German border station. Ten past three, and since then the world clock has shown a different time.

Millions of deadly shots were fired in the Great War, the weightiest, most powerful and far-reaching projectiles ever devised by ballistics engineers. But no shot went farther and was more fateful in modern history than the train that,
carrying
the most dangerous and determined revolutionaries of the century, races from the Swiss border across the whole of Germany to arrive in Petersburg, where it will blow the order of that time to pieces.

In Gottmadingen this unique projectile stands on the rails, a carriage of second- and third-class seats, with the women and children in second class and the men in third class. A chalk line on the floor marks off the area over which the Russians rule as a neutral zone, distinct from the compartment occupied by two German officers who are escorting this cargo of live explosive. The train rolls through the night without incident. Only in France do German soldiers, who have heard of Russian revolutionaries passing through, suddenly race up, and once an attempt made by German Social Democrats to communicate with the travellers is repelled. Lenin must know how he will expose himself to suspicion if he exchanges a single word with a German on German soil. They are welcomed ceremoniously in Sweden, and fall hungrily on the Swedish breakfast table, which serves a smorgasbord that seems to them like an improbable miracle. Then Lenin has to buy shoes to replace his heavy mountain boots, and a few clothes. At last they have reached the Russian border.

The first thing Lenin does on Russian soil is typical of him: he does not see individual people, but makes for the newspapers. He has not been in Russia for fourteen years, he has not seen the earth of his country, its flag or the uniform of its soldiers. But this iron-hard ideologist does not burst into tears like the others, does not, like the women in the party, embrace the surprised and unsuspecting soldiers. First the newspaper,
Pravda
, he wants to search it and see whether the paper,
his
paper, keeps to the international standpoint with sufficient determination. Angrily, he crumples it up. No, it does not; there is still too much about the motherland, too much patriotism, still not enough that, as he sees it, is purely revolutionary. It is time he came back, he thinks, to take the helm and impel the idea of his life towards victory or downfall. But will he get the chance? Won’t Milyukov have him arrested as soon as he is in Petrograd—as the city is not yet called, but soon will be? The friends who have come to meet him are now in the train, Kamenev and Stalin, wearing strange, mysterious smiles in the dark third-class compartment, dimly lit by a light running low. They do not or will not answer his question.

But the answer given by reality is phenomenal. As the train runs into Finland Station the huge concourse is full of tens of thousands of workers, guards of honour carrying all kinds of weapons are waiting for the home-coming exile, the
Internationale
rings out. And as Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov steps out of the train, the man who the day before yesterday was still living in the cobbler’s house is seized by hundreds of hands and hoisted up on an armoured car. Floodlights are shone on him from the buildings and the fortress, and from the armoured car he makes his first speech to the people. The streets resound, and soon the “ten days that shake the world” have begun. The shot has hit its mark, destroying an empire, a world.

WILSON'S FAILURE

THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES

28 June 1919

O
N
13
TH DECEMBER
1918 the mighty steamer
George Washington,
with President Woodrow Wilson on board, is on its way to the European coast. Never since the beginning of the world has a single ship been awaited with so much hope and confidence by so many millions of people. The nations of Europe have been fighting each other furiously for four years; hundreds of thousands of their best young men, still in the bloom of youth, have been slaughtered on both sides with machine guns and cannon, flame-throwers and poison gas; for four years they have expressed nothing in speech or on paper but hatred and vituperation for each other. But all the bad feeling whipped up could not silence an inner voice that told them that what they said, what they did, dishonoured our present century. All these many people, consciously or unconsciously, had a secret feeling that mankind had retreated headlong into chaotic centuries of a barbarism thought to be dead and gone long ago.

Then, from the other side of the world in America, a voice spoke out clearly above battlefields still hot with blood, demanding “never war again”. Never discord again, never the criminal old style of secret diplomacy that had driven nations to the slaughter without their knowledge or
volition
, but instead a new, better world order, “the reign of law, based upon the consent of the governed and sustained by the organized opinion of mankind”. And remarkably,
that voice was understood at once in all countries and all languages. The war, yesterday still a pointless quarrel about tracts of land, borders, raw materials, ore mines and oilfields, had suddenly taken on a higher, almost religious meaning: eternal peace, the messianic empire of law and humanity. All of a sudden it no longer seemed as if the blood of millions had been shed in vain: this one generation had suffered only so that such suffering would never be seen on earth again. Hundreds of thousands, millions of voices, in the grip of frenzied confidence, summoned this man; Wilson was to make peace between the victors and the defeated, and ensure that it would be a just peace. Like another Moses he, Wilson, was to bring the tablets of the new League of Nations to the peoples who had gone astray. Within a few weeks the name of Woodrow Wilson becomes a religious, a messianic power. Streets, buildings and children are named after him. Every nation that feels in need or at a disadvantage sends delegates to him. The letters and telegrams with suggestions, requests and adjurations from all quarters of the globe arrive in their thousands and thousands, building up until whole crates of them are carried aboard the ship going to Europe. A whole part of the earth, the whole world unanimously demands this man as the arbitrator of its last quarrel before the final reconciliation of which it dreams.

And Wilson cannot defy the summons. His friends in America advise him against going to the peace conference in person. As President of the United States, they say, it is his duty not to leave his country; he would do better to conduct negotiations from a distance. But Woodrow Wilson is not to
be dissuaded. Even the highest position in his country, the presidency of the United States, seems to him a small thing beside the task incumbent on him. He wants to serve not a country, not a continent, but all mankind, and not this one moment but a better future. He doesn't want to be
narrow-minded
and act only in the interests of America, for “interest does not bind men together, interest separates men”. Rather, he wants to serve the advantage of all. He himself, he feels, must take care that military men and diplomats do not
appropriate
national passions again: the union of mankind would mean the death knell for their fatal professions. He must be the guarantee, in person, that “the will of the people rather than that of their leaders” is heard, and every word is to be spoken before the whole world, with doors and windows open at that congress of peace, the last, the final peace congress of mankind.

So he stands on the ship and looks at the European coast emerging from the mist, vague and formless like his own dream of the future brotherhood of nations. He stands erect, a tall man with firm features, his eyes keen and clear behind his glasses, his chin thrust forward with typically American energy, but his full, fleshy lips are closed. The son and grandson of Presbyterian pastors, he has the strength and restricted vision of those men for whom there is only one truth, and who are sure that they know what it is. He has the fervour of all his pious Scottish and Irish ancestors in his blood, and the enthusiasm of the Calvinist faith that sets a leader and teacher the task of saving sinful humanity, not to mention the obstinacy of those heretics and martyrs who
would rather be burnt for their convictions than deviate one iota from the word of the Bible. And to him, as a Democrat and a scholar, the concepts of humanity, mankind, liberty, freedom and human rights are not cold words but what the gospel was to his forefathers. To him, they mean not vague, ideological concepts, but articles of religious faith, and he is determined to defend every syllable of them as his ancestors defended the message of the evangelists. He has fought many battles, but this one, he feels as he looks at the land of Europe becoming ever clearer before his eyes, will be the deciding one. Instinctively, he tenses his muscles “to fight for the new order, agreeably if we can, disagreeably if we must”.

But soon the severity leaves his gaze as he looks into the distance. The cannon and flags that greet him in Brest harbour are merely honouring the president of an allied republic, but the noise he hears from the shore is, he feels, not an artificial, organized reception, not a pretence of jubilation, but the blazing enthusiasm of a whole nation. Wherever the train in which he is travelling goes, flags wave—the flames of hope—from every village, every hamlet, every house. Hands reach out to him, voices roar around him, and as he is driven into Paris down the Champs-Élysées, cascades of enthusiasm fall from the living walls. The people of Paris, the people of France, as the symbol of all the distant nations of Europe, are shouting jubilantly, they press their expectations on him. His face relaxes more and more, his teeth flash in a free, happy, almost intoxicated smile, and he waves his hat to right and left as if to greet them all and the whole world. Yes, he did right to come himself; only the vigorous will can triumph over
the rigidity of the law. Can one, should one not create such a happy city and such joyfully hopeful men and women for everyone, to last for ever? One night for rest and quiet, and then he will begin the work of giving the world the peace it has dreamt of for thousands of years, thus doing the greatest deed that a human being has ever accomplished.

Journalists flock impatiently to the exterior of the palace that the French government has set aside for his use, to the corridors of the Foreign Ministry, to the Hôtel de Crillon, headquarters of the American delegation. They are an army of some size in themselves. A hundred and fifty have come from North America alone; every country, every city has sent its correspondents, and they are clamouring for tickets to let them into all the meetings. All of them! For “complete publicity” has been promised to the world. There are to be no secret meetings or agreements this time. The first of the fourteen points runs, word for word, that there shall be “open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind”. The pestilence of secret agreements, which has demanded more deaths than all other epidemics, is to be defeated once and for all by the new salve of Wilson's “open diplomacy”.

But, to their disappointment, the impetuosity of the
journalists
comes up against delaying tactics. Yes, certainly, they would all be given access to the large meetings, and the minutes of those public meetings—in reality, chemically cleaned of all causes of tension—would be conveyed to the
world in full. But no information could be given yet. First the method of procedure had to be established. Disappointed, those who wanted to know more felt that there was some inconsistency here. However, they had not actually been told anything untrue. It was over the method of procedure that Wilson sensed the resistance of the Allies at the first
discussion
between the Big Four; they did not all want to negotiate openly, and with good reason. Secret agreements lie in the files and records of all military nations, agreements ensuring that they all get their share of the booty. There is dirty laundry that can be mentioned only in a very restricted circle. If the whole conference were not to be compromised from the first, these matters had to be discussed behind closed doors and sanitized. However, there were differences of opinion not only in the method of procedure but also at a deeper level. Fundamentally, the situation was entirely unambiguous in both groups, the American and the European, a clear opinion on the right, a clear opinion on the left. It was not just that peace was to be made at this conference; there were really two peaces to be made, two entirely different treaties. One peace was to end the war with defeated Germany, which had laid down its arms, and at the same time another, the peace of the future, was to make any future war impossible for ever. On one hand peace of the old, hard kind, on the other the new Wilsonian covenant that was to found the League of Nations. Which was to be negotiated first?

Here both points of view come up sharply against each other. Wilson takes little interest in peace only for the present day. Determining borders, paying compensation, making war
reparations and so forth should, as he saw it, be left to the experts and committees on the basis of the principles
established
in the fourteen points. That was painstaking, detailed work, subsidiary work, work for experts on the subjects. The task of the leading statesmen of the time, on the other hand, should, and he hoped would, be what was new and coming into being, the union of nations, eternal peace. To each group, its own ideas are of pressing importance. The European Allies reasonably make the point that the exhausted and battered world cannot be left waiting months for peace to be made, or Europe will succumb to chaos. First they must get tangible matters settled, the borders, the reparations. Men still
carrying
arms must be sent back to their wives and children, currencies must be stabilized, trade and commerce must get going again, and only then, on an established basis, can the mirage of Wilson's project be allowed to shine brightly. Just as Wilson is not really interested in peace for its own sake, Clemenceau, Lloyd George, Sonnino, as practical men and tacticians, are really indifferent to Wilson's demands. They have paid tribute to his humane requirements and his ideas out of political calculation, and in part also out of genuine sympathy, because, whether consciously or unconsciously, they feel the captivating, compelling force of an unselfish principle on their nations; they are therefore willing to discuss his plan, qualified and watered-down to some extent. But first, however, peace with Germany as the conclusion of the war, then the covenant.