SEEDS OF CONFLICT IN RUSSIA

Evening Post, Volume XCV, Issue 41, 16 February 1918, Page 6

SEEDS OF CONFLICT IN RUSSIA

The German-Austrian policy is instituting triangular trouble between the Russians, the Ukrainians, and the Poles; and yet the German newspapers still fear that the Bolshev'ks may retain sufficient hitting-power to "embarrass- Germany during the peace negotiations with the Allies." It is evident that the plans for the triangular fight have been well made. The Polish army originally raised by Germany in occupied Poland was overtly intended to be used only m the defence of Poland. Covertly, Germany was determined to turn it into a German tool, for use anywhere. Her design was, however, stubbornly opposed by the Poles, who have no overwhelming desire to 'fight anybody's battles but their own. Foiled in the first place, Germany has since striven to bring about a situation that will compel the Poles, in ostensibly Polish interests, to maintain a check upon the Russians. It is in the name of a completely restored Poland that the Poles have turned eastward against the Bolshevik armies, instead of turning westward against Germany, despoiler of the fairest Polish provinces. Lately it was announced that the Poles had captured Smolensk; which, if true, indicates that the trouble between the Poles and Bolshevik Russia has now been fairly firmly established. At the same time, the seeds of similar conflict have been sown, between the Poles and- the Ukrainians,-for the boundaries conceded by the Central Powers to the Ukraine include Volhynia and part of southeastern Poland, or at any rate a p*arfc of ths territory which Poles consider to be historically and racially Polish.

If there is an historical Poland to be recovered from- the Bolsheviks and the new Ukraine, there is a, really vital Poland to be recovered from Germany; bub the Central Powers have sp arranged ifc that the Polish army shall have quarrels, or grounds for quarrel, on the other fronts. Warsaw advises that '"war between Russia and Poland is now a fact." At the same time it is cabled that the Poles of Cracow are in mourning for the territorial surrenders to the Ukraine; political action is already taking place, and Austria-Hungary will be in a position to play off Poles against Ukrainians just as Germany is playing ofi Poles against Russians. In the meanwhile, a third movement—Bolshevik Russia against- the Ukraine—-is reported tp be developing. In Thursday's issue we remarked that "it will be- interesting, to watch the f urtheir 'progress of the Bolshevik, attempt to wrest from the bourgeois element the governing power in the Ukraine. Though he wiK not use bayo. nets on Germans, Trotsky will apply them * liberally to Russians; and a, Bolshevik conquest of the Ukraine might cut tho ground from under the feet of the framers of tho new (Ukraine) treaty." To-day the Cologne Yolks Zeitung declares that positive information exists that the Bolsheviks are concentrating for an invasion of the Ukraine, but that "Germany will not permit Trotsky to rob her of the-fruits of the Ukrainian peace. "■

However, the problem for Germany is •not so simple as that. So long as she contemplates a grand offensive elsewhere, intervention in the Ukraine will not appeal to Germa.ny as it might have two or three years ago. For the present at any rate it is likely that the policy of tha .Central Powers in -tho 'East "will, be,}

to-make the other people fight; and they have created a situation which should enable them to do this with some degree of impunity and immunity.