PROGRESS OF THE WAR

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 98, 18 January 1918, Page 4

PROGRESS OF THE WAR

A certain amount of light is thrown to-day upon developments in Russia. The Bolshevik leaders have-been driven to confess that the armies are perishing of famine and to appeal to the people to betake themselves to work in order to reliev© the desperate straits to which Russia, is reduced. This should moan that Lenin and his associates are nearing the end of their tether. They obtained place and power by promising to bring about peace and easy prosperity, and presumably they will remain in power only until a sufficient number of the Russian people realise that these benefits are not to bo gained by giving free rein to anarchy. A terrible shortage of supplies at the front is not, of course, a new state of affairs. A message transmitted from Petrograd many weeks ago declared that "commanders at the front continue to send tho most ominous dispatches concerning tho exhaustion of supplies, and pictures arc already beginning to bo drawn of the consequences of hungry hordes of soldiery invading the centres of population." What is new in the situation is that the Bolshevik leaders find themselves compelled to proclaim the existence of conditions which nntil recently they made every effort to conccal or obscure. Tho deception of the people in regard to the stato of the armies is typical of tho whole Bolshevik policy. For instance, it was reported some time ago that the Russians were being kept entirely in the dark regarding the reception of the news of the Maximalist coup d'elai in Allied countries, and that telegrams from the foreign news agencies were suppressed.

_ In all its developments this policy of deoeption, like the destructive internal policy with which it went hand-in-hand, invited an ultimate painful awakening, and it is distinctly suggestive of the plight to which the Bolsheviki are reduced that now find it nccessary to hasten this awakening. It is even more disastrous from their point of view that they are constrained to advocate industry and a constructive policy as remedies for tho evils Jfcheir own treason and zeal for tho abolition of existing institutions and property rights havo done so much to accentuate. That the apostles of anarchy and destruction have been driven to rcvorsc their tactics commands attention above all as illustrating the terrible state into which Russia has fallen, but a hope is raised also that the Bolsheviki, now visibly self-condemned, may presently be called to account by the people whom they have so flagrantly misled and deceived.

Another of to-day's messages quotes a Berlin correspondent as stating that CIF.NRCAr, Kaledin has request-eel the Ukraine delegates at Brest Litovsk to watch the interests of the Don districts, adding that if the Ukraine reached an agreement with tho Central Powers the Cossacks at the front would be demobilised. This is perhaps a case in which the wish 'is father to the thought. At all events, apparently reliable news has gone to show that General Kaledik is a much greater power in the land than is implied in the statement of the Berlin correspondent. Towards the end of last November, for instance, the Petrogrnd correspondent of the Morning Post wroto that behind or beyoncl all the_ apparently hopeless chaos in Russia, tho forces which made the Russian Empire were not idle. "But," he added, "those who know Russian history, that history which is not found in the books, understand perfectly well how matters will end. Even as I write, the position is becoming already clear. The election for the Constituent Assembly will take place, but the Constituent Assembly will not meet at all. The success of the Bolshevik movement, whatever that movement may really cover, has damned tho Constituent Assembly."

"In tho meantime," the ; correspondent added, "I would tall attention to the following facts. The vast gold reserve • of the Russian Empire, which was removed from Petrograd to the Kremlin of Moscow in 1913, was, later, carried still

further into the interior. It is in sale hands. General Kaledin, Hotman of united Cossackdoiu, is in secure possession, with trustworthy, disciplined troops of all arms, of all those regions of European Russia that produced a harvest this year, and is rapidly capturing thoso remaining territories upon which Russia relies for her daily bread. A vast Union under the name of the South-Eastern Union has been formed, including the Don territory, a great part «f Little Russia, the Lower A r olga Provinces, and Turkestan—that is, the area which feeds •all Russia. This Union is extending and promises to cover the Siberian cornlands. General Kaledin, holding tho gold reserve and bread supplies, is master of the situation, and those he serves will accept dictation neither from Kerensky, Lenin, nor anybody else, least of all Germany. The Allies may safely admit to bowing acquaintance all or any of tho curious individualities thrown up from the depths by internal disturbances caused originally by imbibing poison covered by cheap German labels. But for intimate friendship and future partnership tho Allies must look elsewhere, and in the meantime wait as unconcerncdly as may bo until their old friends reappear above the present turmoil." It is, of course, obvious that General Kaledin is playing a waiting game, but this does not necessarily mean that his objects are as limited as is implied by the Berlin correspondent quoted above, and in somo other messages which have recently come to hand. Precisely to what point the development of the "South-Eastern Union" has been carried wo do not know, and are not likely to know for some time to come. But unless the Morniny l'ont. correspondent at Pofcrograd and some other people are badly misinformed, General K,u,edin has a much more spacious purpose in view than merely to protect and safeguard purely Cossack interests.

Yesterday there was news of a successful daylight raid by British aerial squadrons on Karlsruhe, a town in the llhino Valley about 105 miles from the base at or near Nancy from which the British arc presumably operating. To-day further raids of'shorter range arc reported 011 centres between Metz and Luxemburg, and in the neighbourhood of Metz itself; Even in their present scale these operations dwarf the German raids on London, but no! doubt the full development of the Allied aerial offensive of the year will be deferred until the comparative lull which reigns at present on the Western front has come to an end.

A big drop in the losses of British merchant ships by mine and submarine is reported this week. In fact, the losses suffered are the lightest recorded in any week, except one, since the Admiralty began issuing weekly returns in February last year. Whilo this pronounced improvement is very welcome, it is to be remembered always that the. progress of the campaign must be measured, not bv the events of a single week, but by those of a much more extended period.

It is now officially, reported that Japanese warships have been seni! to Vladivostok, but there is no reason, meantime, to suppose tha\ they have been sent with any other object than the one professed—to protect foreign lives and property. It does not seem at all likely that Japanese troops will be sent to Russia, either to co-operate with Russiau forces against Germany or to assist in restoring orderly government. • ,

Some idea of the loss suffered by Germany in the destruction of a great chemical factory—an event reported at the time as a national disaster—was given recently by a London correspondent. He quotes a chemical engineer as stating that the Gorman papers were nol exaggerating when they described the affair as a national calamity. The Griesheim Elektron, the establishment destroyed, is one of the four big German chemical works,, and when one talks about a big chemical works in Germany, he adds, one means something very big indeed, for the German method is to concentrate chemical manufacture in a few vast centres in which an enormous variety of processes for the use of products and by-products can bo dovetailed into one another on the spot. All these four great chemical firms' are now producing- explosives. The speciality of the Griesheim Elektron Works was tho application of electricity to chemical manufacture, and their chief works was upon various electrolytic processes. It is probable that this works was the' chief source of poison gas.