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passage from Petrograd to Stockholm for these officers, any possibility
of a passage through Archangel being out of question at the present
moment, when British cruisers have already begun the bombardement
of the Islands covering Archangel. Our negotiations on this subject are
not vet terminated.

Yours truly, TCHITCHERIN.

To Mr. Poole, American Consul General.

5th August, 1918.

Dear Mr. Poole, at the moment when, after the unjustifiable Anglo-French
 incursion citizen Lenin declared in a speech that the Anglo-French
 were in fact making war upon us and you came to us to ask whether
 we are at war or at peace and whether you must remain with us, I
answered that our people is still at peace with the peoples of your countries
 and that in order to enable you to remain here as the representative
 of America you would continue to have the same facilities as before
for communicating with your Government. These facilities are still at
your hands so far as these depend upon us, seeing that the stoppage of
telegraphic communication through Mourmansk is the work of Britain
and not ours. We on our part have placed at your disposal our only
means of communication With your Government—our wireless stations,
and these being at your disposal we ask you to make it known to your
Government as well as to the great masses of the people abroad that an
unwarranted attack, an act of sheer violence, is being made upon us.
We have done nothing to provoke this agression, our people want
nothing else but to remain in peace and friendship with all the
toiling masses of all other countries. In the midst of peace the
Anglo-French armed forces have made a violent irruption into our
borders, taking by force our villages and our towns, shooting down the
faithful responsible workers of the Soviets, disbanding the workers’
organisations and throwing their members into prison or sending them
away from their homes, with nothing to justify their acts of robbery.
No declaration of war was made against us and without a state of war
being declared, battles are being fought against us and our national property
 is being robbed. Against us no right is recognised, no rule is upheld
by those who have sent this force of invaders. Because we, the first in
the world, have established a Government of the exploited and of the
poor, against us pure banditism is considered permissible, and people who
nave not declared war upon us are operating among us like barbarians.
But we, the Soviets of the exploited and the poore are not barbarians
like these Invaders. To those who are shooting down the members of