Languishing his revolutionary career with the Trinidadian Marxist writer and critic C. L. R. James. James had just completed World Revolution, 1917-1936) his anti-Stalinist history of Communism, and the two men discussed the failures of revolution since 1917, and in particular Trotskii's supposed 'degeneration' at the height of the revolutionary crisis in Germany in 1923. James was referring to an interview Trotskii had given at the end of September 1923 in his capacity as head of the Soviet military the Workers'-Peasants' Red Army to a group of visiting American congressmen. With Germany on the verge of civil war, and Heinrich Brandler, the head of the German Communist Party (KPD), in Moscow for consultations on how best to launch an armed uprising, Trotskii's statements had been remarkably cautious, restrained, and pacifist. Senator William King, a Democrat from Utah, asked first about the prospects for war in view of the disintegration of German society: 'Is it possible that the USSR may intervene in the event of revolution in Germany?' Trotskii did not rule out war, but only a defensive war, for 'we shall not despatch a single Red Army soldier across the frontiers of Soviet Russia unless we are forcibly compelled to do so.' He disavowed any intention of interfering in an internal German affair, pointing out that 'we could intervene only by making war on Poland.' Revolutions can only succeed or fail on their own merits, Trotskii asserted, not through external aid. While the Soviet Union would welcome a German revolution, it would not go to war to bring that about; intervention in Germany would mean war with Poland, and 'war between us and Poland would mean an all-European conflagration, which would wipe the remnants of European civilization from the face of the earth. After such a war, Americans would visit Europe in order to study here the graveyard of an old culture.'1