KQLCHAK'S GOVERNMENT

Evening Post, Volume XCVII, Issue 134, 9 June 1919, Page 7

KQLCHAK'S GOVERNMENT

CONDITIONS OP RECOGNITION

HOPEFUL REVIEW OF MILITARY

„ SITUATION.

(ONITED PRESS ASSOCIATION.—COPIRISHT.J

(AUSTRALIAN-NEW ZEALAND CABLE ASSOCIATION.) LONDON, 29th May.

The Council of Five has agreed to recognise Admiral Kolchak on the following conditions: (1) That he immediately convokes a Constituent Assembly, and if an election is impossible now the Assembly elected under Lenin in 1917 must be summoned. (2) Recognition of the independence of Poland and Finland. (3) An undertaking to submit the claims of the Esthonians ancK Letts to the League of Nations.

LONDON, 6th June. In the House of Commons Mr. Winston Churchili stated that Admiral Kolehak's operations, if they continued to prosper, would facilitate our withdrawal from North Russia. Mr. Churchill discouraged extravagant hopes respecting Kolchak's advance. Kolchak was still1 a hundred miles distant from Moscow. We called Kolchak's Government into existence with a view to preventing the whole of Russia from falling into Germany's hands. We were supplying Kolchak with munitions. Was it suggested we should now abandon Kolchak ? The British operations in North Russia were petty skirmishing, not serious military movements. The British casualties there since the armistice were 129 killed, 166 wounded, and 28 missing.

LONDON, 29th May.

Mr. Churchill, in the House of Commons, gave a hopeful review of the military situation in Russia. A junction would be effected in the near future by General Kolchak and General Ironside. There was a reasonable hope that the North Russia problem would be settled this summer. Bolshevism was not a policy, but a disease; not a creed, but a pestilence. We wanted to make sure that New Russia should be generally a democratic modern State.