THE SEPARATE PEACE

Evening Star, Issue 16662, 19 February 1918, Page 6

THE SEPARATE PEACE

CORRESPONDENT'S SHREWD FORECAST. Writing from Petrograd just, before the Aew Year the 'Morning Post' correspondent stated : In Petrograd' matters drag on from day to day without a gleam of hope for better conditions of life. The Rolshevik Red Guards are going round all the banks arresting the. directors and terrorising the employees. The impossibility of procuring cash, even to pay workmen, is producing a critical situation, which threatens to culminate in a universal strike, which means that Petrograd will have to endure, amongst other amenities of life, pitch darkness for 18 of the 24 hours. The six hours' nominal daylight at this season of the year are not lighter than the dusk of an autumn evening in England. The water supply mav also lail. As for the food question, 'it was never so bad as now.

There can be no doubt whatever anv longer that the whole of Northern Russia »ti r, st Wlll acce P t P c;lCO at a »v price, ihe Cot-mans are perfectly aware of every feeblest breath of opinion' in this country, tor 1 etrograd is full of Germans speakinc the Berlin dialect loudly and at their ease everywhere, without a word of protest trom the dispirited Russians. It is very evident that after the present peace negotiations have been prolonged for the necessary period to give some" appearance of a two-sided bargain the Germans will impose a separate peace on Russia on anv terms theyplease. How much of "All the Russias will acquiesce in a German-made peace is another question, and presumably the eyes of the Allies have long been opened to the real meaning of what they were misled into believing was a democratic revolution 10 months ago. Whether any definite plan of 'action has resulted trom this eye-opening process we here do not know. A representative of one of the Allies said to me last week: "We shall put up with any affront to our dignity to keep Russia in the war.'' Certainlv" affronts have not been lacking to allied" diplomacy.' The. policy or Disregarding them comes a little late, and looks rather like vacillation and the absence of a determined policy after the manner in which the first affronts to the Allies' dignity were met here. In general, the feeling of allied residents in Northern Russia at the present moment finds its nearest parallel in those of the Europeans at Peking during the Boxer troubles. Unhappily, the parallel carries no further than feelings, and whatever comes will come very suddenly, with no preparations to meet it. We are already effectively cut* off from the allied homelands.