BOLSHEVIK WAR.

Taranaki Daily News, 20 January 1920, Page 5

BOLSHEVIK WAR.

RUIN AND DISASTER. ♦CHE POSITION IN RUSSIA, By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. London, Jan. 15. With the latest news from Russia the military defeat of the Bolsheviks passes into the realm of distant possibilities. Flame and sword are furnishing ghastly spectacles of ruin and disaster in the south, and south-west of Russia. Great Russia is ibeing triumphantly re-established by Trotsky's armies.

Amidst this welter o£ misery and death the last remains of Koltchak's and Denikin'g armies are disappearing, leaving nothing. The Times' correspondent at Warsaw says that Denikin's forces have been completely annihilated. The correspondent adds that Trotsky and the Red officers favor an invasion of Poland, which is regarded as certain in April, after two months' re-organisation and re-grouping of the forces. The Poles, it is pointed out, are ready in a strong strategic position, with the Letts and Roumanians on their flanks, but immediate Allied assistance is vital. The Bolsheviks are infinitely more numerous and better equipped. The Reds are making rapid progress at Odessa, where a few Whites under the Allied warships' guns are rallying and talking of opposition. The Black Sea position is complicated by the Russian fleet, which we handed over to the volunteers early in the year. The Times' Teheran correspondent telegraphs that information there shows that the Russian fleet is permeated with Bolshevism. The old Russian Caspian Sea Fleet is in a similar condition and it has sailed from Krasnovodsk, apparently to join the Bolsheviks. The Tartar and Georgian Governments refused to trust- Denikin, whose rigid adherence to the methods and ideas of the old regime and whose failure to recognise the peasants' desire to keep their land raised, wherever he went, a larger crop of enemies than he conquered'. Eastern Siberia is in a state of utter chaos. Hunger is widespread and even the wealthiest refugees are dying of the sharpest pangs. Irkutsk is aflame. The local insurrectionaries are deposing Koltchak officials everywhere.

It is not known what has become of the alert, dapper, sharp-faced little man who since the coup d'etat signed himself supreme ruler of the Czechs. Troops were turned back at the Allies' request and sent along the railway with orders to effect his rescue. The only news coming from the territories to which they returned are fragments telling how the British, American, and Japanese groups are isolated and apparently overwhelmed' and taken prisoner. Extremist outbreaks are reported at Vladivostoek, which the Allies are quelling.—United Service.

THRUST TO THE PACIFIC. DRAMA EQUALS THE GREAT WAR. DANGER FROM GERMANY. London, Jan. 15. The Daily Mail considers the collapse of the White forces in Piussia furnishes a drama as tremendous as the great war and equally terrible, for it means the massacre of thousands accompanied by hideous tortures. The Mail says the unpardonable course would be to yield to the temptation of financiers who arc begging the Allies to allow Germany to march in in order to pay off the Allies' war debts with the proceeds of the exploitation of Russia. That policy will make Germany mistress of the world, bringing a new and worse war when Germany has conquered and assimilated Russia.

The paper further declares that unless Japan largely augments her force the Bolsheviks will soon reach the Pacific Coast. They have travelled at a great pace since reaching Omsk and are showing brilliant organisation. The whole of the Japanese Cabinet, except one, in December favoured military intervention. On the other hand large sections of opinion view the Whites' collapse with equanimity, producing ample evidence of the Soviets' desire to remain within their own frontiers, reorganising industry and society according to Communist theories. Recent interviews with Lenin, Radey and Joffe indicate concentration of their energy upon economic organisation. The Premier is the strongest believer in peace. On this basis the British Cabinet is tending to peace but France remains implacable.—United Service.

THE DEFEAT OF DENIKIN. HOPE LIES IN ALLIES' HELP. London, Jan. 10. The Daily Express correspondent interviewed! Denikin at Taganrog, He attributes his defeat to the overwhelming masses of the enemy from other fronts. He refuses to parley with the Bolsheviks and says that he would hang everybody implicated in the Bolshevik reign. The Russians are anti-Bolshe-vilc at heart. He denied that the volunteer army favoured the restoration of Czarism. Even if he was beaten the. struggle would continue until the righteous cause triumphed. He Still hoped with the Allies' help to destroy the Soviets' power.

Denikin added: "We are fighting to establish a free, democratic State, but there must be a united indivisible Russia, including the Baltic States."

The correspondent adds that there are terrible scenes to the couth. Great masses of refugees are fleeing before the 'Red Terror. The French are landing many guns and a squadron of British aviators, disregarding the War Office orders, continues to harry the Bolsheviks.