THE RUSSIA’S REVOLUTION.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1691, 27 March 1917, Page 2

THE RUSSIA’S REVOLUTION.

ANOTHER Russian in New Zealand —a retired secret service man who has spent many years in Germany —has been giving his impressions of the revolution. The gentleman in question is Mr Yakaree Ermakov, and he told a Lyttelton

Times reporter that up to the present the Russian nation had been like a flock of sheep. Since three weeks before the war commenced the revolution had been in progress, and had had an immense effect in shortening the supplies of ammunition. No doubt the Germans had been aided by many men in power. The Tsar’s wife was a pure German, and there were bound to be a lot of high-placed fellows ready to sell their country to get into her good graces. Nothing but good could come from the revolution. The Russian peasantry feared the Tsar rather than reverenced him, and millions of soldiers had been kept to suppress the revolution. These men would he released for the front with the hundreds of thousands of young political prisoners from Siberia. He reckoned that Russia's strength in the held might easily be doubled. The men in the factories would work len times as hard sinec the great weight had been lifted off, and the men in the fields would work to the utmost. The greatest handicap to Russia was the fact that only two direct railway lines led to the German frontier. Hitherto the most brilliant generals, unless they were of the conservative or loyalist type, were kept in the background. Alexif and Russky, however, were radical-minded, and would now secure [lower that was denied them at the beginning of the war. Through the Baltic provinces, Mr Ermakov added, German influence had been felt. Since the time of Frederick the Great the Germans had dreamed that some day they would exert their inllnence over Russia. And so, every year for the last hundred years, Germans had crossed over to the Russian side, buying out at big prices the lands from which the Russians retired well satisfied. The Germans all became Russian subjects, and entered the. army and navy and police, hut they remained German in their blood, their sympathies and their religion. And it was well known that in the present war these Germanised Russian officers had betrayed Russia wholesale. The Tsar’s wife was the head of the pro-Germans in Russia, and she had exerted ten times the influence of the Tsar, who was not a tiad man, but very weak. Nothing hut good could come of the revolution, Mr Ermakov said, and it would he to the advantage of Britain and Russia if a. permanent alliance could be established. Britain’s ideals of good Government were a thing that Russia could copy. While the Russian nation was so young and vigorous as to he

;i powerful ally. War with Russia was impossible. Russia's ambition was merely lo scrim* Armenia from I he Turks, and (o have an nndei’standiii” 1 dial (he open towns of (he Black Sea would he safe from (he raids of a hostile fleet.