The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1918.

Evening Star, Issue 16663, 20 February 1918, Page 4

The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1918.

. It ib impossible to offer, and equally as < impossible to attempt ThO News from to set forth, a clear and \ Russia. accurate summary of . the situation as it really Is in Russia at the present hour. Outsiders are in no better position to-day to , do so than they have been for many weeks, -y.it not months. Chaos and confusion, - anarchy and infamous doings, would ap- ,' pear, outwardly at least, to continue in , • the ascendant. " Squaring the circle," ,£ telegraphed perhaps the best known and 5: most trustworthy of Russian correspondents (Dr Harold Williams) in the course w-of'a New Year's message, "is an easy compared with an analysis of the I There are three mysV terious factors: Bolshevik psychology, v/German plans, and the Constituent Assem£,ago remains equally true to-day. No man *£pr, group of men apparently can posi%'tively assert either what is happening or ji; what may happen in Russia. It is even whether we- are justified in jjfrusing the term "Russia" in the sense it is pprdinarily used and understood. Who or MSlrha.t is meant by "Russia" at this hour? EWe do not know, -and we should possibly ||l>e. wrong if we attempted to say. There tgMjno one,party that can stand forth con-

fidently and- assert: " Those for whom we speak and act are representative of the great majority of the better elements of the nation." There is a lamentable lack of harmony among the several great. States of that once mighty empire. Siberia, Finland, Ukrainia have not only little in common with the still dominant centres of Petrograd and Moscow, but are in active and aggressive hostility to .them. " Who will survive the welter?" and, more important still, "What sinister game i 8 Germany playing, and how soon will that game declare' itself ?" are the main questions that now present themselves to the perplexed and anxious nations. Ifc is not so much the continuous reports of civil risings and sanguinary repressions that cause alarm as that form in which German statecraft may nest manifest itself.

Whatever else or however little we may or may not know oPthe course of events either in Russia or between the representatives of Germany and Russia, we are sure that Germany is fighting for her own gain; and that neither her word nor her signature, nor what the rest of the world regard,as honor, will forgone instant bo permitted to stand in her way if success is to be attained by their abandonment. Neither Germany's word, nor pledge will to-day pass current among the rulers and Governments of mankind. The war may have taught us much or little; but this at least it has burned into our very being —none but those who themselves are among the Allies' enemies will dare to attempt to deny it—and written deep in the heart of every free man and woman throughout Christendom: that German promises, whether made by word of mouth or formally set in writing, are utterly worthless. They" are, and intended to be, a mockery of the truth and a pledge to be honored only when it pays to do so. "The purposes of. the Central Powers," President Wilson told a joint sitting of the United States -Congress last .December, "strike straight at the very heart of everything we believe in. "Their methods of warfare outrage every principle of humanity and of knightly honor. Their intrigue has corrupted the very thought and spirit of many of our people. . . Our safety would be at an end, our honor for ever sullied and brought into contempt, were we to permit their triumph." These tilings heing so, need there be cause for surprise that the Bolsheviks are learning what every nation and people have long since learned? German armies are advancing on Kovel because it suits Germany to support the newly-proclaimed State of Ukrainia against the hostile Republicanism of the Bolsheviks. The White "Guards, who are fighting and slaughtering in Finland lest they and theirs be slaugh° tered iby the Bolshevik Red Guards, have ny many 'been bailed as patriots who are Haying down their lives for the cause of a free Finland; while yet others claim that the "ibiackbone" of these same Guards is composed of several thousands of wellarmed and equipped German Finns. German policy and German autocracy have nothing in- common with Bolshevism. The two are as far asunder as the poles, and none but idealists of the most impossible type think otherwise. In their blind and indiscriminate arraignment of those whom they term capitalists and tie middle classes, the Bolsheviks were foolish enough to believe that there was no difference between a German and a Frenchman and a Briton. All were tarred with what they are pleased to regard as the same deadly brush ; therefore let each be treated as the enemy of the Russian people, and let the intentionally deceptive promises and deliberate falsehoods of the agents of the Gorman autocracy be accepted at thejr face value ■To-day the unhappy leaders' of the Bolsheviks have learned that between Pmssianism and "Democracy there lies an unbridgeable gulf. The Leninist negotiators at Brest-Litovsk have served the German purpose. They have been cajoled and blinded for nearly three months, and now they are to be brushed aside as of no further value. Whether, as a result of her diplomacy, Germany will reap the reward sho desires is, we think, doubtful. Europe can no longer be governed by systematic lying, rntngue, and murder. And in this knowledge we base our belief in the ultimate emergence of Russia, in common with the rest of that portion of the race which is striving to be free, from,the fetters that now hold her.