The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1923. SLAV DIPLOMACY.

Southland Times, Issue 19771, 20 February 1923, Page 4

The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1923. SLAV DIPLOMACY.

Russia’s diplomatic hand is now appearing into many theatres of discussion. It is reported that a Bolshevik emissary has appeared in the Ruhr zone occupied by the French, and aims at stirring up German workers to oppose, more than they are doing at present, the French authorities. From a single emissary very little may result, but if Moscow has a representative in the occupied zone it means that the Soviet diplomats are ready to seize the opportunity which Germany may provide if, under French pressure, her workers set about overturning the Republic to establish something worse. There may be some connection between this aspect of the situation and the Bolshevik mobilisation of the Red forces. It is possible to find sufficient excuse for the maintenance of Russia’s army on her western frontiers in the substantial army kept on war footing by the Poles, and the disordered conditions in Lithuania as a result of the League of Nations’ efforts to carve new states out according to plan, but the other explanation may be the real one. The danger of a Bolshevik upheaval in Germany must never be forgotten, and if it comes France will probably experience more trouble and suffer more loss than she has done since the war closed. In the Near East Russia has been backing Turkey but the extent to which the counsels of Moscow have influenced Kemal and Ismet is not known. Russia’s interests in the Straits and the Black Sea are not difficult to understand. Her plan for the settlement of the control of the Dardanelles is that the sovereign rights of Turkey shall be confirmed and that in peace time commercial vessels only shall pass through the Straits, with a proviso that Turkey may bar the passage of a warship of not more than six thousand tons, carrying guns of a calibre not greater than fifteen centimetres. In war-time Turkey is to have the right to shut the Straits to the warships of any belligerent, but if she, herself, is at war she must agree to the passage of the Straits by trading vessels of the neutral nations. Submarines are to be prohibited from using the Straits at any time. The beauty of the plan from the Russian point of view is that it turns the Black Sea into a lake into which the war vessels of any nation likely to be dangerous to Russia may not enter. Russia’s southern coast is therefore amply protected against the operations of naval powers. At the same time the Moscow diplomacy seems to be following the old Russian course in the direction of India. With her southern coast safeguarded, she can bring pressure to bear on the Indian frontiers without being herself exposed to counter-attacks by the nation she is irritating—Britain. If the Straits are utilised and made possible to the warships of any nation, then her position is weakened by the fact that she can be attacked in her vulnerable points. The weakness of the Russian plan in trusting to Turkey to maintain the neutrality of the Straits, is that during the recent war when Turkey controlled the Straits, she violated the treaty of obligations put upon her and allowed the warships of a belligerent nation to shelter in them. It was the sheltering of the Goeben and the Breslau which definitely brought the Turks into the war on the side of the Germans. It is rather too much at this stage for the Russians to ask the Allies to agree

to a plan which places Turkey in the position she occupied prior to her violation of her obligations in 1914, and the Russians may find, too, that in the hour of their need Turkey will open the Straits to some friend. At the present moment the Russians are not themselves attacked by any of the European nations and they are being allowed to prosecute their affairs without interference; but it is patent that the Moscow Government has no desire to maintain a splendid isolation and it is proved by the fact that as soon as active hostilities against Russia have ceased she has been busily engaged in interfering with the affairs of other peoples. The Russia of to-day has to be watched with as much care as the Russia of the old days, and peculiarly enough her diplomacy is following the lines that it followed under the Tsars.