COMBATING BOLSHEVIKISM.

Wanganui Herald, Volume LII, Issue 15671, 23 November 1918, Page 4

COMBATING BOLSHEVIKISM.

The greatest uncertainty at present is about the new nations carved out of the dead Empire of the Romanoffs. Russian went to pieces as the result of a Bolshevik explosion, and its divisions represent little more than a geographical grouping of a congerie of peoples who have overthrown one form of government without, so far, being able to establish another on any solid basis. As for the corpus of the late Russian Empire, from which these members have been cut off, it appears to have yet evolved nothing that even in the language of courtesy could be called a stable government. All the Russia that was now represents little better than a mob of brutalised and hunger-driven people, clamouring for vengeance on those who have reduced them to that position, and not knowing how to get it. Under the blind guidance of unpractical demagogues, the besotted masses, with bloed In their eyes, are incapable for the time being of any sound constructive work in the way of new nation-building. In Austria the position, though to some extent similar, is not so bad. Bolshevikism, too, has spread amongst the ruins of the Hapsburg Empire, and it may spread to Germany before the fury of the unchained beast is spent. In the interests of humanity the task of the Allies will be to restrict Its ravages as far as possible. But the extent to

which the old international order Is changing and giving place to the new is so vast that what would have arrested the attention of the world as history-making events on the major scale are now regarded as mere incidents.