RUSSIA’S PERIL.

Taihape Daily Times, 13 November 1917, Page 2

RUSSIA’S PERIL.

Writing from Petrograd early in September, the correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph gave an interesting account of a journey he had in a railway train Avith delegates of the

various Russian parties returning fros| a convention held in Moscow. He “Imagine the position. For weeks now the Eussian people has been faced with the most dreadful possibilities and threatened with calamities Europe for centuries. These possibilities are still present. The Convention has not altered their outward shape or their objective'probability one whit. The latest nows we hoard in the train was as bad as over, a fresh collapse of infantry regiments at the front, a wild outbreak of hooligan soldiery at Kazan bad reports of food trouble from various parts of Russia and a hundred other of those minor events and incidents that make daily life in Russia one perpetual unrest and strain. There was no attempt to minimise their gravity. Yet I noticed in the conversation a new undertone of confidence. It was as though, having faced the very worst, men had ceased to fear. There was a long dispute in the corridor between members of the Council of Workmen and Soldiers’ Delegates ’ and other delegates. Several officers and a factory manager violently attacked the council. The officers spoke of the intolerable attitude of the soldiers at the front. 'A yoking wounded lieutenant described the gal- T lant attack of a ‘Death Battalion/ ' which had been practically wiped out because the flanking regiments had not moved an inch to help it. The officers bitterly charged the Council of Workmen and Soldiers’ Delegates with, responsibility for the collapse of the army. The factory manager, nervous and overwrought, told how since April he had had to wage singlehanded a struggle Avith a thousand workmen. “The Council of Workmen and Soldiers ’ Delegates men .were chastened; they had abandoned many of fneir illusions, but they Averc still convinced that their councils were a necessary factor in the organisation o fthe country. But they were anxiously looking both to the Eight and the Left, for the Maximalists, who lay loav for a time, are now raising their heads again. M. Tscrttolli declared in the convention that the Workmen’t and Soldiers’ Council had at last learnt hoAv to deal with the Maximalists, and one delegates assured me that the only hope of keeping them under some control was to permit them take part in Councils where they Avere amenable to influence. If they were driven out altogether, ho said they would only grow desperate and still more dangerous.’*