THE PUZZLE OF RUSSIA.

Taihape Daily Times, 21 January 1918, Page 6

THE PUZZLE OF RUSSIA.

GERMAN DIFFICULTIES.

BRITAIN REGAINING FAVOUR.

LONDON, January 6,

"It is difficult to talk sober sense about the peace negotiations," says the Daily Chronicle's correspondent at PetTOgrad,' "The Germans, after creating a Frankenstein for their own purposes are considerably perplexed by his antics. They came expecting to reap the harvest sown by their secret agents. Their elaborate espionage and corruption led to the disorganisation of Russia, and to her collapse as a military power. Then they deliberately performed the comedy of opening peace negotiations with the people whom they cynically regarded as their own agents, but now they find that those people have wild ideas of their own, and that their previous cooperation was double edged. The Bolsheviks, allowing Germany to use them for her ends, did so with a fixed determination to use Germany for theirs. The Germans are now bitterly reflecting upon the proverb about ''Supping with a long spoon.' I admit that I do not understand the Bolsheviks. I do not mean the ignorant masses, nor the army subordinates, including besides a number of idealists and a motley crowd of the most thorough-paced scoundrels, but Lenin and Trotzky are a mystery, The game they are playing is wild beyond belief. If it is difficult for the allies, it is at least as difficult for the Germans. Russia, having ceased to fight, finds new means for selfdefence. The most virulent form of anarchy prevails in Russia, It is-fierce-ly destructive, and is causing untold suffering.

"Why this rage of destruction, why the senseless cruelty which impels the looting persons to skin the landowners' cattle alive, and send them bellowing pitiful down the road? I am not dwelling on the details of the anarchy but I point out that it increases tenfold Germany's difficulties. She stands aghast at the result of her own efforts. We need not lose hope. All who care for Eussia and for her future take long views. Eussia will not fight any more. The equilibrium of the war has been violently shaken by her defection but that does not mean the war is lost. With a clear "purpose and a steady brain it is still possible to save all the values

worth saving.

"The Bolshevik organ, Izvestia, has ceased its diatribes against England. The Cadets and the Social Ecvolutionaries now bitterly attack the German Imperialists, condemning the German opy)ression of the working classes in Poland, Lithuania, and Courland. It declares that Eussia must repudiate Germanv's terms.

"The Bolsheviks express surprise and indignation that Germany, while admitting the principle of no annexations, refuses to withdraw her froops from the occupied territories, declaring that the latter have already asserted their independence The Bolsheviks, withheld these terms for a week, until it was impossible longer to conceal them. They now admit that the Brest-Litovsk negotiations were a failure, and that the German terms formed an impossible basis of peace. "The Germans at the 'conference at Petrograd seem to assume that they have only to arrange the technical de- - tails of the peace treaty. They insist on the immediate establishment of 'railway and commercial ,intercoujiSe, and exchange of war prisoners. The Eiissians strongly object, pointing out up to the present that they only agreed to 'discuss technicalities to the armistiee. Dr. Kaempff, a German delegate, declared that war prisoners would not be released until the conclusion of a general peace. "At the meeting of the Soviet last night, 3,1. Kameneff, announced that the German terms were unacceptable. Thereupon the representatives of one army after another declared that the soldiers would not, could not, fight Eussia, unless a miracle happens, stands faced with the certainty of a humiliating' separate peace, dictated by the Germans. The Bolsheviks still try to evade the issue. They promise a revolution in Poland, and hint at the possibihry of a revolution in Germany. Also they print revolutionary leaflets in German and Magyar, which are confiscated immediately on arrival in the enemy lines."