RUSSIA.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 16501, 31 July 1919, Page 3

RUSSIA.

UNSATISFACTORY POSITION. OWING TO BOLSHEVIK SUCCESSES By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright. LONDON, July 25. Mr. Murdoch write:* that the recent Bolshevik military successes have considerably enhanced tho security of the .Soviet Government. The anti-Bolshevist commanders have now no hope of defeating -the Soviet armies before the winter compels a cessation of fighting. Indeed, some anti-Bolshevik armies urgently require the winter interruption for reorganisation and recruitment. After reviewing the Bolshevik successes Mr. Murdoch says Trotsky has dismissed his highly-placed advisers, who advised against an offensive as a means of denlinjsr with the Archangel expedition. Mr. Murdoch declares that the extricati&n of the British force may bo impossible, but the Bolsheviks offer to withhold attack on condition that tiie British forco embark as soon as possible. The Times’ correspondent describes the extraordinary lighting in this nightless region. The English are so tortured by myriads of mosquitoes that death from tho Bolsheviks’ well-aimed shrapnel seems relief. Every remedy tried against the mosquitoes has proved useless. The fair faces of Englishmen soon become unrecognisable from the attacks of these pests. The Bolsheviks put the poorest peasants into the front lines, lashing and terrorising them into action, but behind are splendid artillerymen. who are seemingly officered by Germans. The correspondent adds that the Bolsheviks are anything but the demoralised and inferior fighters they were thought to be. The War Office announces that evacuation will be possible as soon as the Dwina" rises, when the whole force will bo withdrawn. Tho Daily Mail, in a leader, says that German officers are staffing the Bolshevik armies, and a German engineer at Moscow is controlling the munition factories. If the Allies do not proceed on a crusado with the anti-Bol-sheviks Russia will fall body and soul into tho arras of tho Hun, and the war which was so gloriously won in the west will be lost in tho east. Mr. Wilton, the press correspondent, in a telegram from Tuman graphically describes tho flight of hundreds of thousands of refugees who were panicstricken before tho Bolshevik armies. The flight eclipses the terrible exodus of 1915. All classes are participating, aud are ill-fed and ill-garbed. Thousands are barefooted, but all are grimly determined to abandon everything rather than endure the Bolsheviks’ presence. An Archangel correspondent depicts a most* serious position of the anti-Bol-shevik troops, who began to mutiny on tho 6th, when a battalion formed of cx-Bolshevik prisoners murdered their British officers and fled to the forests. Others mutinied later. The newest British reinforcements are nothing like the calibre of the elderly. Scottish and Yorkshire troops, who although heavily outnumbered for a year, by forced marches and dashing patrol work have bewildered and browbeaten tho Bolsheviks. The correspondent regards the Bolshevik army as an efficient and powerful fighting machine, with a. well-train-ed artillery- Tho Bolsheviks include manv thousands of conscripted peasants. Evacuation means tho certain massacre of 3000 anti-Bolsheviks at Archangel, but the only alternative is immediate strong reinforcements. —Times Service.