AUSTRO-RUSSIAN PEACE MOVES

Evening Post, Volume XCIII, Issue 96, 23 April 1917, Page 6

AUSTRO-RUSSIAN PEACE MOVES

From occasional inferences and remarks, dropped almost parenthetically, it is now seen —as was long ago suspected—how near the Russian revolution approached to •* military paralysis. The peasant soldiers, it is disclosed, rushed, after the revolution/ to their homes "in large numbers"—attracted, no doubt, by the notion of an immediate unlocking of private arid Crown estates—and discipline Jleems for the moment to have reached a very low ebb indeed. Fortunately, the Austrian armies either were not in a position and condition to attack, or their commands were stayed by political notions of a separate peace j and now the discipline and efficiency of the Russians are reported to be returning to normal. If the peasant soldiers as a whole adhefe to the colours, they will be a powerful coUriter-weight to the extreme section, for they think of politics mainly in terms of land, and are little attracted by the doctrinaire phantasms that pass current in cities. Meanwhile the belligerents continue a fierce diplomatic contest, the Central Powers (through AustriaHungary) tempting Russia to make a separate peace; while there afe riot lacking on the Entente side people who see in the Russian revolution a chance to make (through Russia) a separate peace with Austria-Hungary. In such a? contest the Entente fights under a big handicap, in that Vienna is much more under the thumb 01 Berlin than Pctrograd can ever be under the influence of Paris and London. Recently-expressed suspicion that Germany may be behind the Vienna peace moves is strengthened by one of to-day's messages. At the same time, the cablegrams also flatter the hope that the Emperor Charles and Count Czernin may yet free themselves from German domination sufficiently to approach the subject of a separate peace without manacles; in which case the Wai 1 Would probably collapse through the elimination of the middle link in the enemy combina^ tion. At time of writing there is no further news of Count Tisia's political fortunes, but the Vatican reports disturbances in Hungary, and in Austria the Emperor Charles is reported to be resisting the Germanisation of the Czechs, the secession of the Galician Poles, and other moves of the German Party.