The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1919. LEFT TO HERSELF.

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 221, 17 September 1919, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1919. LEFT TO HERSELF.

For the cause that Hefcs «Mi«f<K«*, 'For the wrong that need* retittanoe, For the future in the distance, And the good that tee ran do.

According to a brief message published to-day, the Full Council of the Peace Conference has decided unanimously to "allow the Russian revolutionaries to work out their own ealvation." What this means exactly ie not clear. It means that tho Allies will withdraw their own contingents from Russia, but will they also recall their military missions and cease eupplying Kolchak and Denikin and the North Russians with munitions? Will the blockade be lifted? Will the Bolsheviks be recognised as a Government? These are important questions, and until they arc answered it is impossible to estimate accurately the importance of the Council's decision. Yet that decision is important. It marks a definite break in the policy of the Allies towards Russia. That policy hae been extraordinarily vague, halting, and weak, but if only for tho sake of convenience it must be dignified with tho name of policy. The Allies have never known their own mind about Russia. They have backed and filled, advanced and retreated, talked war and peaco, made war but smitten gently, and generally dono everything conceivable to earn the distrust of both sid.ee. There wero times when a vigorous forward movement might have swept the whole Bolshevik system, away; it ie reported that when Germany surrendered the Bolshevik leaders thought the game was up, and the Allies could have walked into Petrograd without difficulty. These opportunities were not grasped. On the other hand, it seems to be established that Lenin made an offer of peace to the Peace Conference, which was rejected. The Allies, of course, have been in a most difficult position. JThey did not want to commit themselves to an invasion of Russia; they wanted peace everywhere. They feared opinion at home. So they compromised by beating the Bolsheviks ■with a small stick. They sent a few troops to Russia, and helped the antiBoleheviks -with money and munitions. There were probably sharp differences of opinion on the Allied Council; it is hardly likely that on such a question statesmen of such varying equipment and views as M. Clemenceau, Mr. Lloyd George, and President Wilson, would agree about a Russian policy. For the most part the problem was allowed to drift by a body which could not agree, was beset on all sides by difficulties, and had a thousand other things to attend to.

The Allied Council will have been considerably influenced by recent events. The march on Petrograd, to be undertaken jointly by the Finns, Esthonians, and Lithuanians, seems to have been abandoned, apparently because theae elements could not -work together. Sir Hubert Gough, head of the British mission in this part of Russia, has returned homo, and the inference i 8 strong that he has given up the task of reconciling conflicting interests in disgust. In the meantime the Bolsheviks are seeking peace with the Baltic provinces. In the north the Russian troops trained by the British in the hope that they would hold their own when the British contingent had gone, have proved unreliable. In spite of this the British are going, and it is not pleasant to think of the probable fate of the inhabitants of the occupied districts if the Bolsheviks conquer them. Mr. Churchill promises that Russians committed to our side will be carried to safety, but he surely cannot mean to transport more than the chief men and their families. The rest of the population, including many who have actively sympathised with the British and rendered services to the troops, will be left exposed to the wrath of the Bolsheviks. It had been hoped that this front would join up with Kolchak, in whose advance the Allies put their trust. But Kolchak is now back in Siberia, and though Denifcin's striking euccesses are a set-off to this loss of territory, the balance of operations in the last few months has been with the Bolsheviks. They occupy a military position similar to that of Xapoleon against the Grand Alliance and Germany in the earlier stages of the Great War. They have interior lines and a unified command. How both sides will fare when the country is left to its fate will depend on unknown quantities. If the Allies go on helping Denikin and Kolchak with munitions, Bolshevism may ultimately be defeated. If the Allies raise the blockade, the Bolsheviks, who are already in possession of the manufacturing districts, will be able to strengthen their position by importing raw material. And influencing the whole situation is the economic and political condition of Bolshevik Russia, about which it is difficult to get accurate information. It is to be hoped that Kolchak and Denikin will soon be victorious, but the possibility must be faced of Bolshevism getting the whole of European Russia under its influence and reaching down to the borders of Afghanistan. And looming in the background is the greatest danger of all, the possibility of Germany gaining control of an exhausted Russia and moulding its immense resources to -her own ends.