Untitled

Evening Star, Issue 16050, 29 February 1916, Page 4

All the speeches so far delivered in tho Russian Duma, wo are Russia . advised, express an iron

and the War. determination never to ceaso from, the conflict that was thrust upon tie nation until complete victory has been achieved. ■. It is well for Russia and well for the world that this is so. There has been no single member of the Allies against whom the duplicity, treachery, and lying of German diplomacy have been brought with greaterpersistency than against Russia. The Runs know well that with unbeaten and unconquerable Russia out of the running, as an active participant, their- prospects would be incalculably improved. Therefore they have left no stone unturned, that long experience and national aptitude have prompted the use, to create dissension alone between the Allies, but among the many classes and sections of their citizens. And there was a time in the case of Russia when they nearly succeeded. How nearly tho world does not know, but it was near enough to cause many sleepless hours and anxious days in the hearts of those loyal Russians—among whom word the Tsar himself and Mr iSazonolf, the Minister of Foreign Affairs—who- believe in the greatness and future of their country. “The attempts from without “and from within,” Mr Sazonoff told Mr Gregory Mason, the special correspondent of tho New York ’Outlook,' “to bring “Russia to a separate peace with Ger“many have been stronger than the world “dreams. . , . These efforts have by “no means ceased, but the crisis has been weakened and the greatest danger is past, “for true Russians of all ranks and classes “now see this peril clearly, and are united “ to frustrate it.”

It will be noted that the Minister uses the words “true Russians.” The inference, therefore, is that .there are Russians who are not true. Ami the inference, we regret, is not, unjust. Russia, more especially on her eastern frontier and in Petrograd, has, like her ally England, her own domestic treasonmongers; and, like England’s, they are the more dangerous to the nation because outwardly and with their lips they boast their love of and belief in their country’s cause. Chief of these are the Monarchists, who early in December last held a' congress in Petrograd, at which resolutions of a most reactionary and ultra-loyal character were carried, and subsequently presented to and coldly received by the Emperor. These included a condemnation of those domestic reforms and progressive legislative freedoms through . and by which Russia can alone hope to maintain her place as a great people. The Russian Press were .to bo yet further repressed; the proposal for a Ministry responsible to the Duma was denounced as “insolent disrespect to the supreme authority ”; and the indefinite postponement of a resumption of the Duma’s activj£y demanded.-* Nor was this aLL These strange patriots, not content with their resolutions, in the course of their speeches in support-of them, went out of their way to characterise in advance any who neither agreed with them nor approved of their methods as “rotting, or Jew-ridden, or “ engaged in the seizure of authority, lost “ for Russia, seething traitors, and “rebels”—terms which, as the ‘Novoe Vremya ’ pointed out, are dished up daily against Russians with a different dressing in the hostile German Press; while among the men thus libelled more than half of them were serving in the trenches, and the others working in munitions factories. It is an Odious business, but it is in harmony with all that has preceded it, A people that will order and approve and Justify the torpedoing -of shigs that are

known to carry women and children; that : will sack, outrage, destroy, and starve a whole countryside, and rain bombs upon open towns, is nob a people that will feci either compunction or loathing against the . men who plot and bribe and lie in order to obtain by roguery what they' cannot attain by wholesale murder. . “ The Germans,” adds Mr Sazonoff, “ everywhere are “ masters of duplicity. Not qnoe since the " outbreak of war has their diplomacy “ been anything but underhand and un“fair. In Russia, by calumny, chicanery, “and treachery, they have tried, to pro“voke Internal disorder, and by every “foul means they have tried to separate “the Allies.”

Russia, we rejoice to know, has escaped the snare of the fowler. 'The Tsar has put aside his evil counsellors, and turned a deaf ear to their requests in the most effective way. The Duma has been convoked, its members have sunk their party divisions, and are uniting for the one single object that is worthy the attention of serious men. Tho war will be continued to its only possible end. This is Russia’s “iron determination.’* -And vviiat Russia, through her Duma, now says is bub a repetition of what site has before made known when the clouds hung heavier and. the outlook was darker than today. But whether it comes from the East or West, the message wo receive is the same. Russia merely endorses what France and Britain and Belgium, even apparently crushed and broken Serbia and Montenegro, have long sjnee affirmed and reaffirmed. Nor in the bold front these nowpresent to tho sanguinary enemy, of mankind can there bo detected sign of wavering or halting. It-may please the enemy to continue to vaunt and threaten, and the Imperial Chancellor of Germany to lie to the Prussian Diet- that “as our enemies “ forced war on us, so they bear the guilt “ and. responsibility, that the people of “Europe should be still tearing themselves “to pieces ” ; but neither passionate appeals, nor crude blasphemy, nor vulgar lying can change the inexorable issue. This is tho glad message that is running through the world to-day, the reality of which neither threat of some'new devilry in submarine and aerial warfare nor sacrifice of myriads of willing victims can subvert, and it will fall upon the ears and hearts of the waiting nations like a benediction.