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Otago Daily Times, Issue 17174, 29 November 1917, Page 4

RUSSIA AND THE ALLIES' PACT. It k to be apprehended that the protest which the Allied Powers are expected to make against the violation by Russia of her compact with them with respect to the prosecution of the war will not be effectual. For all that will be achieved by it, in fact, it might as well not be made. It is, we are told, to be addressed to the Russian people. This novel form of address for a diplomatic remonstrance is being adopted because, for the time being, there is no responsible authority in Russia, entitled to claim that it exercises control throughout the country, to which any such protest may be delivered. There is, it is true, a Government of a kind established in Petrograd under the direction of "Comrades" Lenin and Trotsky, whose acts proclaim them to be more worthy of being regarded as conscienceless highwaymen than as sober statesmen. But this Government is not recognised by the Allies. Its foreign policy, so far as it can be said to possess a foreign policy, seems to be to make Russia" a mere appanage of Germany. If there had been any doubt upon this point, it should be dispelled by the statement credited to M. Lenin that German troops would defend Russia if that country should be attacked by Japan in punishment for her apostasy. But even if the Bolsheviki, who are temporarily in power in Petrograd and who claim to have secured control over several of the other important towns, were not prepared or disposed to deliver Russia into the hands of Germany, the Government that is representative of them is not one to which the Allies could make an appeal with any hope of success or without any sacrifice of dignitj. The Lenin regime has been instituted on the principle that the past is dead and buried, and that the history of Russia is to be begun anew. As no security is offered to either life or property in Russia itself, where, everything is being thrown into the melting-pot, so also is no respect to be paid to the engagements into which Russia, under previous Governments, entered with foreign countries. The whole of the secrets of the diplomacy of the past are to be revealed to the world, which has not so far learnt from the disclosure anything that is very remarkable, and the agreements with foreign countries that formed no part of the secret diplomacy of the past are, in accordance with 'the German precedent, which probably commends itself to men of the Lenin type as reasonably honest, to be treated as "scraps of paper." The declaration in terms of which the five great Powers among the Allies by agreement in 1915—Italy then acceding, as Japan had previously done, to the original declaration of September, 1914—bound themselves to act jointly in the conclusion of peace terms was published broadcast. It was comprised in two brief paragraphs: The British, French, Italian, Japanese, and Russian Governments mutually engage not to conclude peace separately during the present war. The five Governments agree that when terms of peace como to be discussed no one of the Allies will" demand conditions of peace without the previous agreement of each of the other Allies. This solemn undertaking is repudiated by the Bolsheviki. It would be idle Mr the Allies to make any appeal to their sense of honour. There is, however, no other authority in Russia to which a protest may be addressed. Numerous local controlling authorities there seem to be, but there is none which exercises any power other than local. And the Russian people itself, distracted as it must be by its domestic troubles, is too huge and unwieldy, even if it were not hopelessly disunited and disorganised, to be appropriately the recipient of a protest against the violation of a solemn international undertaking by the present rulers of its navy and of a considerable proportion of its army.