SELF DETERMINATION

Evening Post, Volume XCV, Issue 14, 16 January 1918, Page 8

SELF DETERMINATION

DISCUSSION AT BREST LITOVSK

COMPLAINTS OF RUSSIAN

ATTITUDE.

(AUSTRALIAN-NEW ZEALAND' CABLE ASSOCIATION.) (Received January 16, 2.30 p.m.)

AMSTERDAM, 15th January. Dr. Kuhlmann, speaking at the Brest Litovsk negotiations, adopted the standpoint that portions of Bueeia which were striving to obtain separation had already qualified to conclude agreements with Germany. M. Trotsky replied that the present representative bodies could not prove that they 6poke' in tho name of the entire people. Dr. Kuhlmann and Count Czernin intimated that they were willing to invite representatives of these sections to Brest Litovsk. M. Trotsky replied that the territories | concerned had no democratic representative bodies. The Russian delegates there had proposed strong conditions in regard to the right of self-determination for these peoples. _ Herr Hoffmann protested that the Russians spoke as if they were the conquering party. The German Army Command yould refuse to evacuate Courland and Lithuania and the islands in the Gulf of Riga. Herr Hoffman continued that the Russian delegation demanded rights of selfdetermination for occupied territories, while they did not apply it to their own country. "It is a Government founded purely on power which ruthlessly suppresses all who think differently from it, and under which everyone with different views is declared outlaw." Herr '.Hoffman went on 1 to instance the Maximalist outrages upon tho bourgeois counter revolutionary people. The negotiations were adjourned, but no date has been fixed for the nest meeting, j