The New Zealand Times. SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 1917. STRUGGLING RUSSIA

New Zealand Times, Volume XLII, Issue 9736, 11 August 1917, Page 6

The New Zealand Times. SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 1917. STRUGGLING RUSSIA

It is not surprising to learn, on the authority of Mr Elihu Boot, the American Envoy in Russia, that the reports of disturbances in that country are very much exaggerated. That is reassuring for the civil side, which seems fairly settled, though much remains yet to bo done. The amount, on the one )rand, remaining to be done is enormous; nothing less than the establishment of a system of government equipped at ©very point, moving through all its functions with the ordered honesty and technical skill of vast numbers of public servants, civil and military. This is the task caused by the defeat of Czardom and Bureaucracy, which between them were anarchy. It was anarchy supported by armed force directed by the lawless will of a selfish despot regarding himself as divinely appointed, and administered by nobles and officials of the most unscrupulous corruption the world has ever seen. While the anarchy was at its height another anarchy worked against it, underground, fighting murder "with murder, and lawlessness with lawlessness, acting on the supposition that the substitute it proposed for the prevailing anarchy, whatever it might be, would (1) be preferable because uncorrupt, and (3) be an effective shelter for the establishment on good lines of stable government and help its development. But the sense of the Russian people was against anarchy in any form. The secret popular ideal was for, stable, honest government, and the secret anarchist became & minus quantity capable of no further effort than sufficed to keep alive a handful of extremists when the visible and paramount anarchy disappeared. The ostensible popular ideal continued to be expressed in phrases about the Little father, and reverences before im-ges ol the Czar. But the Revolution spread, fixing itself into the very roots of society. When it burst forth il,o tl’inii’.'irvt anareny of Czardom and Bureaucracy Ml without even a crash. AH the “Little Fathers" and all the gen ml exiors passed away in a whiff of smoke ; the execrations deep, long p..:it-up. of an appallingly oppressed people took their place, and the extremists who tried to count in the new Government were quietly put down, and their leader, .Lenin, finds himself in prison, charged with treachery to his country for German gold. 71 was inevitable that a period of confusion should have followed the clean sweep of anarchist Czardom. In-

evitable, also, that tne nows agencies and special correspondents of great dailies at Pctrograd should have failed to understand a situation of which the world had never furnished an example. Inevitable, also, that .this ignorance should have been exploited by enemy agents, and led astray by holiest workers for truth. But the weeks passed and the Revolution grew in strength. It never lost its desire for stable, government, of regular system, established on a constitutional basis. The only constitutional differences were about the constitutional road. There were other differe’Ves about the •pitting down ot disturbances, about the prosecution of offenders of the old regime, about terms of peace, about the discipline or the armies, and about the prosecution of the war. Finance did find the Revolution unprepared, for millions had been stored away out of the reach of the corrupt nobles and bureaucrats, and presently money began to flow in. There was great industrial trouble and colossal falsehoods were told the correspondents of the enormous wages extorted, and these falsehoods were duly passed on with stamp of endorsement. But the armies were strengthened; they faced the enemy; they won victories. The constitutional struggle proceeded, punctuated bv demands from all the localities in Russia. And diero came finally, after the third 'or fourth change _ of Ministry, a prospect of final constitutional settlement. . Suddenly came the overwhelming storm. The armies showed disaffection; their discipline vanished, mutineers left thoir places in the field by whole regiments and entire divisions. The Russian offensive collaps ed, and the enemy is on Russian soil, threatening them with destruction That ia to say, they are threatening the Revolution. As the Russian armies of Nicholas I. advanced into Hungary nearly seventy years ago, destroyed the Hungarian Revolution, and gave up the country to tile fiendish severities of Austria, so how the German armies are threatenin'; to do the same hv the Russian Revolution. ’The danger is imminent, pressing, a menace of death and destruction on a scale of which only the Romanotl anarchy, with the backing of a corrupt nobility and a dishonest hnreaucraey. and the help o.f foreign hnvene l s, is capable. The General commanding m die field has rent. u.y ni'> voice in piteous protest againsli the cause. The Revolution, vyith a thoroughness of good intention, attempted in the beginning to give the Russian soldiery a system of discipline appealing to their honour, in place of the system which appealed only to their fears. But they carried their reform too far. They established the committee system, as described by “The Times” correspondent; they placed the army in the hands of men incompetent, ignorant, and non-com-batant; they effected, not the retorm <\.f discipline, but the total dcstriiction of discipline. The system which has done this, and brought the Galician armies of Russia into the Ukraine and opened a dangerous gap between them and the armies ot Roumania, still remains. The indiscipline still prevails and the “voluntary retirements” still continue. If the committees are not abolished, the total collapse of the Russian armies is certain, and as the enemy knows it, will be immediate. If the Governmenfc retains the committees, the u . s " etan devolution is doomed to finish m, an orgy of bloody