3/VIII.

Everything you write in your latest letters is absurd to the point of being supernatural.

To pursue the "former" policy of not breaking with the Entente after Onega is laughable**.

You cannot make a lady with a child a virgin again.

It is also laughable to call intervention or aid what we are continuing, namely
manoeuvring, leaving the Germans to take what the Entente has already taken, thereby complicating and
delaying the Anglo-American-Japanese strangulation of Russia.

* This refers to the state seal of the RSFSR. Ed.

** On 31 July 1918, Entente interventionists landed a detachment at Onega and captured the town. Ed.