RUSSIA.

Colonist, Volume LX, Issue 14648, 28 February 1918, Page 5

RUSSIA.

GERMAN MARCH ON PETROCRAD.

CITY IN A FERMENT.

ENROLMENT OF WORKERS,

THE GERMAN 'PEACE TERMS,

SCHEMES IN THE NEAR EAST.

(Australian and N.Z. Cable Association)

London, Feb. 26

The Germans are within a few hoars' march of Petrograd.

Petrograd has been thrown irto a ferment in view of the apparent German intention to occupy the city.

The Soviet 1 as ordered the enrolment of workmen between the ages of 18 and 60, into a Red Army for a holy war.

The Smolny Institute has been changed irto a military camp. Workmen are assembling en masse.

The British and American Embassies have left.

The absence' cf newspapers brought thousands into the streetß to learn the news, but there is no panic.

Speculation is rife as to whether the Germans ■; ar& pending Germanised Russian bands to Petrograd as saviours of society with the Duke of Hesse, brother of the ex-Czarina, leading, with a view to founding a new dynasty.

Germany's terms- are interpreted to mean a desire to make the Baltic a German lake, to establish a drain of buffer States between Russia and Germany, and to secure a footing iri the Black Sea across the Ukraine. The last mertioned would have an important bearing on the Eastern situation, making. Germany independent ,p,f Turkey and Bulgaria, because she would then have a new line of of communications from Berlin via Odessa and Trebizotd, bringing Germany deep into Persia and close to India.

The "Manchester Guardian" says tie strange thing about Germany's terms is that no demand is made for the Russian fleet. Presumably the Germans feared the Russians wouM destroy it and they hope to get it later.