The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE MONDAY, NOVEMBER 5th, 1917. WILL RUSSIA QUIT?

Taihape Daily Times, 5 November 1917, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

MONDAY, NOVEMBER sth, 1917. WILL RUSSIA QUIT?

(With which is incorporated The Tainape Post and Waimarluo News).

During last week war intelligence quite justified the assumption that Russia would either conclude a separate peace or that she could confidently be regarded as a cypher in present and future calculations. Poland, it was stated, was forming up a nationality and evolving a Government on German lines, under allegiance to Germany and was raising or reorganising an army to protect Polish frontiers so as to relieve the Germans for operations elsewhere. Sweden was behaving ominously, and there seemed danger that some of the Scandinavian , peoples might take sides with Germany. Of this, however, no further confirmation has come to hand, but it is reported from Petrograd that Kerensky said that Russia entered the war early and is now worn out, she claimed that other Allies ought to shoulder the burden of war. This looks so like a German engineered report that We may disregard it in our .estimates of -how matters stand regarding the war in Slavdom. It is just what a-pro-Hun would be likely to suggest to Kerensky or to any other Russian on whom it might have effect; it is not official, on the other hand, it is authorless. That the message was bogus and did not emanate from an official source is proved by the promptitude with which it is denied. from the Secretary of State for America, who, in commenting on. the rumour, said, "Any statement that Russia will quit is entirely unfounded." The Russian Embassy states that Russia will adhere to the Allied cause, and will not make any separate peace_ Then, a Russian official report says, "there is no possible hope for supposing that the enemy can transfer troops to any other front." This with reports of military movements which inform us that in the Riga region the enemy is withdrawing to previously prepared positions, and that Russian torpedoers sank an enemy torpedoer, and burned two enemy steamers. The most extreme pessimist will find little to fume and tear his hair about in these latest indications of the position on the Russian front, or in the expression of Russian feeling. The imperative na-

ture of Mr Lansing's statement that J " Russia will not quit," no doubt con- ( veys the truth. It seems all that we are to be permitted to know, but, at the same time, it is an assurance that Russia is pulling herself into line as rapidly as one could reasonably expect.