BOLSHEVIK ARMIES.

Taranaki Daily News, 21 February 1920, Page 10

BOLSHEVIK ARMIES.

GREAT MILITARY MACHINE. OLD LEADERS IN CHARGE. London, Dec. 31. The main fact of the present situation in Russia is that a gigantic military machine has arisen within Soviet Russia, headed by former Tsarist generals, anil composed of 10 armies. General Evert, former commander of the Tsarist' centre against the Germans, has the supreme command against K9Uchak, and Gourki retook Kicff. Tchernemissoff, the former commander of the Twelfth Army, Grcgorieff, Klcmbovsky, and many corps and divisional commanders, have accepted service under Trotsky. The motive behind the Soviet armies has improved their morale, and -uncertain commentators ask whether the revolutionary armies, like Napoleon's, will turn from their own impoverished country towards the food and richness elsewhere. iSome suggest that the Germans will try to join them in a rising in the hope of throwing off the unpopular treaty. Koltchak's mid-winter retreat across Siberia furnishes a terrible story of indescribable sufferings, equalling in horror anything known in war. The demoralised and hungry armies are (-asy prey for Mongolian and Tartar bands of robbers, who descend with savage cruelty upon the straggling companies. Koltchak's gold, which was originally t.h-> Tsarist Government's treasure, ancr wac removed from Petrograd to Samara and then Omsk, fills six trains. Its fate when it gets to Irkutsk is problematical. At Irkutsk workmen are banded into trained gangs of 15,000 strong. Their sympathies are Bolshevik, find it is already reported that they have seized the railway station. Twenty-five British' officers are cut off south of Tomsk, and the Czechs are endeavoring to rescue them. General Sominoff, leader of the Cossacks along the Mongolian frontier, is plotting to displace Koltchak, whilst. General Dietriefos, the strongest military leader, remains an unknown quantity, and has thrice repulsed the offer to resume the command of the wrecked armies. The Russian commanders are bitterly quarrelling, and in an attempt to arrest Sakharoff, who is responsible for the retreat across the Irtyah River, a general •was killed. The correspondent of The Times at Pekin states that the hardships of the wounded, sick and refugees are appalling. This retreat, forced to be undertaken in winter across a single congested railway, with dissensions among the troops guarding the line, has been disastrous and ghastly.