The Daily News. THURSDAY, JULY 31, 1919. THE RUSSIAN PROBLEM.

Taranaki Daily News, 31 July 1919, Page 4

The Daily News. THURSDAY, JULY 31, 1919. THE RUSSIAN PROBLEM.

The recent cable message'containing the views of the well-known war correspondent, Mr. Murdoch, as to the effect of the Bolshevik successes .will create much concern throughout the Empire. He distinctly .states that anti-Bolshe-vik commanders have no hope of defeating the Soviet armies before winter compels a cessation of hostilities. That, however, is not the worst phase of the matter, for lie declares that the extrication of the British force may be impossible. This force is, according to the Times correspondent, suffering such tortures from mosquitoes that death from Bolshevik shrapnel is hailed as a relief. The "War Office, however, announces that evacuation will be possible as soon as the Dwina rises, when the whole force will be withdrawn—a course that will give the Germans, who are controlling the Bolshevik forces and ammunition factories, much gratification. The effect of the withdrawal may be estimated by the ominous warning given by the Daily Mail that unless the Allies proceed on an armed crusade with the anti-Bolsheviks, Russia will fall, body and soul, into the arms of the Hun, and the war, which was so gloriously won in the "West, will be lost in the East. The description of the flight of the. panic-stricken refugees before the Bolshevik armies is most pathetic, yet ill-fed, ill-garbed and bare-footed peasants would sooner abandon everything than endure Bolshevik barbarities. Pointed attention is drawn to the fact that the Bolsheviks are not now an armed rabble, but an efficient and powerful fighting machine, with well-trained artillery, and that evacuation by the British means the certain massacre of 3000 antiBolsheviks, the only alternative being the immediate despatch of strong jjhyiji will

the Allies do? Apparently the problem is too intricate for unravelling. What they ought to do seems evident, but if the incidents ' of August last year—when the Bolsheviks seized 5000 members of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, murdered several hundred of them, gave orders for the seizure of French and British subjects, attacked the British Embassy, murdered and mutilated Captain P. Crombie (British Naval Attache), and turned the whole country into a shambles—failed to arouse the Allies to action, it is hard to conjecture what will. Nor should it be forgotten that in the same month the Bolsheviks entered into a new treaty with Germany by which they promised to fight against the Allies in North Russia, and to pay Germany three hundred million sterling. The peril of the Russian collapse in the war was that it threatened to give Germany control of the routes to India, Central Asia and the Far East, and thus to enable her to obtain supplies and attack Britain in these remote fields. We have already seen Bolshevik work in connection with Afghanistan, and it is well known that the German militarists are still bent on dominating the East. Despite these facts all that the Allies did was to send an absurdly small force to Northern Russia, to aggravate rather than ameliorate the position, and now it is proposed to withdraw this force—if possible. The Big Pom'—Prance, Japan, America and Britain—had it in their power to deal effectively with the Bolsheviks, but unity of action was lacking, hence the mishandling of the situation, and the possibility of a tragic denouement. We I may venture to quote the sapient words ojf Dr. Harold Williams, who said: "It seems to me that the policy of the Big Four, as outlined in their reply to Dr. Nansen, simply postpones once more, instead of hastening, the day of deliverance. For it is based on the assumption that starvation in Russia is the cause of Bolshevism, whereas Bolshevism is the cause of starvation." The actual truth about the situation in Russia has never been made known; all we have had consisted of a sequence of very conflicting cable messages, at one time stating that the Bolsheviks were rapidly breaking up and retiring, and at another time that Admiral Koltchak had been forced to retire, with little or no possibility of resuming his forward movement for possibly twelve months. Then came the announcement of the recognition of the Kol|chak Government by the Entente, quickly followed by news of his retirement before the Bolsheviks, and by a controversy as to the bona fides• of Koltchak and Deniken, while we now learn 1 that Britain is leaving the Bolsheviks to their own devices. It is a hopeless tangle, but the seriousness of the situation is growing apace. There is not the slightest hope of the League of Nations being able to deal with the probi lem, which may certainly be rej garded as bristling with menace ■to India and the Far East. Ger- , many is pulling the strings, and engineering the activities; yet the Allies appear to be impotent to stem the tide of their evil forces.