THE COLONIST. FRIDAY, MARCH 22, 1918. THE RUSSL4.N TRAGEDY.

Colonist, Volume LX, Issue 14667, 22 March 1918, Page 4

THE COLONIST. FRIDAY, MARCH 22, 1918. THE RUSSL4.N TRAGEDY.

The amazing tragedy of Russia seems to have reached the furthest limit of

chaotic anarchy, and to defy any hope .that out of. ttis mass of. maddened ny-

manity can again be evolved a great and ordered nation. Tie "Pravda"

thinks otherwise, and sets the motto, "Victory or Death," before a people to whom it admits that the revolution has brought division, enslavement and hu-

initiation. The onl^ hope for Russia pending, the conclusion of a "world peaet lies in the appearance of some man of constructive genius and overmastering will, a benevolent despot with sufficient military force behind him to make his decrees effective, and te would have a task at whicb the greatest and most successful despots of history might have quailed. Japan could speedily pacify and organise Eastern Siberia, but she would be hardly likely to extend her regenerating influence into Western Russia at present. Failing tie early, salvation of tie Russian people from themselves, it would seem that the re-establishment of order will be carried out by-the Avstrians and Germans in the Austro-German way. In some of his recent despatches Dr Harold Williams draws a graplic picture of the madness which has overwhelmed Russia. The vagaries of the extreme Russian sects', he says, are repeated on a colossal scale. It is as tfiougb the whole people had decided to follow the example of those Old Believers who, just before the time of Peter the Great, defended their integrity by self-immola-tion. Wty this rage of destruction? Why this senseless cruelty that makes | looting peasants skin the landowners' I cattle alive, and send them pitifully bellowing down the road? All this anarchy increases tenfold fie difficulties of the Germans. They aimed steadily at the disorganisation of Russia. But one may imagine that they are aghast at the result of tlreir own efforts/,. And the anarchy:ii;i|t steadily growing worse. With all their violations of law and right, the Germans lave certain mental conventions which are not flexible enough for the present Russian situation. '1 cannot tell," Dr. Williams says in another letter, "of all the brutalities, the fierce excesses, that are ravaging Rtssia from end to end more ruthlessly than an invading army. Horrors pali on us— robbery, plunder, and tie cruellest forms of murder have grown a part of the atmosphere vie ■live in. How is it that the war has recoiled on Russia in such a national suicide? The tyranny of to-day iB worse tlan the tyranny of Nicholas 11. Yet it would be extreme folly to wish Nicholas back, foi it is the war, combined with the long past of Russian twranny, that is crowding on Russia to-day in a new, wild despotism of chaotic revenge for the wrongs of many generations.''. The Bolsheviki, he says, are emphatically not pacifists; their object is to substitute for the war between nations a war between classes. Bolsheviki I aye stopped war with Germany only to kindle civil war in Russia. The weapons forged against Germany are being used to shoot down the citizens of Petrograd and Moscow, to mow down officers of the Russian Army and Fleet. The Bolsheviki do not profess to encourage any illusions as to tlreir real nature. They treat the bourgeois, of all countries with equal contempt; they glory in all violence directed against the ruling classes; they despise laws and decencies that they consider effete, tiey trample on the arts and refinements of life. It is nothing to them if in the throes of the great upheaval the world relapses into barbarism." .