TROTZKY'S PRO-GERMANISM IN PEACE DISCUSSIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIX, Issue 10, 11 January 1918, Page 5

TROTZKY'S PRO-GERMANISM IN PEACE DISCUSSIONS.

I SOCIALISTS IN* PETROGRAD OPPOSE SEPARATE PEACE. LONDON, January 10. The Petrograd correspondent of the "Daily Xews" interviewed M. Trotzky ; on the point of his departing for Brest Litovsk, with the mistaken impression that the Allies wanted Germany to succeed in making an advantageous separate peace with Russia, so that Germany, guarding herself on the East front, might be more 'willing to surrender what the Allies wanted on the West front. M. Trotzky interpreted Mr. Lloyd George in this fashion. The Allies would then blame the Bolsheviks for the lost freedom of Poland, Lithuania, and Courland. The correspondent assured M. Trotzky that he was mistaken. The latter replied: is the Allied policy." Further questioned, he said that an international Labour Conference would do no harm. The attitude of the Bdlsheviks would not be influenced by the Allied Governments, but only by the Allied peoples. "It is difficult," said M. Trotzky, '"to say what hopes there are of a general peace, because the Germans have not yet been offered a chance of a general acceptable peace, but must need it. They have abandoned the attempt to move large units from the East front to the West. They now take men singly. They jump out of the trains and escape. Deserters tell mc that the 6oldiers will not go to the western front. Twenty-five thousand Germans at this moment are mutinying behind the German front in the Kovno district. The high command, failing to get their comrades to attack the mutineers, surrounded them, hoping to starve them into submission." M. Trotzky refused to be drawn regarding the actual terms he hopes to obtain, adding, laughing, "Logically, we ought to declare war on England now for the sake of India, Egypt, and Ireland." The Zurich correspondent of the "Echo de Paris" states that the Council of Workmen and Soldiers' Delegates, and all the Socialist groups in Petrograd, have issued a proclamation against the Bolsheviks' separate peace, declaring that a general peace might save Russia from political and economic catastrophe and civil war. The Bolsheviks began peace negotiations without waiting for the Constituent Assembly or consulting the people. Several divisions of the infantry and cavalry have carried resolutions condemning Lenin's and Trotzky's policy. M. Kerensky is drafting a report for the Constituent Assembly, explaining why he refrained from peace negotiations, the reasons why he sent the Czar to Tobolsk, and the circumstances causing the fall of his own Government. A Finnish delegation has left for England in order to influence Britain to acknowledge the Finnish Republic. Later it will visit France, Belgium, Italy, and Switzerland. w The Kaiser, replying to Prince Lubomirski, the spokesman of the Polish Begency Council, said he learned with lively satisfaction that the actions of himself and his ally were regarded as a realisation of the Polish nation's longcherished wishes.—(A. and X.Z. Cable.)

A Russian wireless message states: —M. Trotzky has initiated negotiations with the Persian Government relative to the withdrawal of the Russian forces from Persia, conditional upon similar arrangements with Turkey, in accordance with the suggestions made at Brest Litovsk on December 15.—(A. and N.Z. and Pieuter.)