BOLSHEVIK ARMIES

Marlborough Express, Volume LIIII, Issue 14, 17 January 1920, Page 6

BOLSHEVIK ARMIES

GREAT MILITARY MACHINE

OLD LEADERS IN CHARGE

LONDON, Dec. 31. The main fact of the present situation in Russia is that a gigantic military machine has arisen, within Soviet Russia, headed by former Tsarist generals, and composed of 61 armies.

General Evert, former commander of the Tsirist centre against the Germans, has the supreme command against Koitchak, and Gourki retook Kieff. TcheremissofF, the former commander of the Twelfth Army, Gregorieff, Klembovsky, and many corps and divisional commanders, have accepted service under Trotsky. The motive behind the Soviet armies has improved their morale, i'tid un^artain. commentators ask v-hether the revolutionary armies, like Napoleon's, will turn from their own impoverished country towards the food and richness elsewhere. Some suggest that the Germans will try to join them in a rising in the hope of throwing off the unpopular treaty. Koltchak's midwinter retreat across Siberia furnishes a terrible story of indescribable sufferings, equalling in horror anything known in war. The demoralised and hungry armies are easy prey for Mongolian and Tartar bands of robbers, who descend with savage cruelty upon the straggling companies. Koitchak's gold, which was originally the Tsarist Government's treasure, and was removed from Petrograd to Samara and then Omsk, fills six trains. Its fate when it gets to Irkutsk is problematical. At Irkutsk workmen are banded into trained gangs 15,000 strong. Their sympathies are Bolshevik, and it is already reported that they have seized the railway station.

Twenty-five British officers are cut off south of Tomsk, and the Czechs are endeavoring to rescue them. General Seminoff, leader of the Cossacks along the Mongolian frontier, is plotting to displace Koitchak, whilst General Dietrichs, the strongest military leader, remains an unknown quantity, and has thrice repulsed the offer to. resume the eomrrand of the wrecked armies.

The Russian commanders "are Mitt rly quarrelling, and in an attempt to arrest Sakharoff, who is responsible for the retreat across the Irtysh Liver, a general was kiltad. The correspondent of the Times at Pekin stxtes that the hardships of the wounded, sick, and refugees are appalling. This retreat, forced to be undertaken in winter across a single congested railway, with dissensions., among the troops guarding the line, has been disastrous and ghastly.