PERIOD XLII. The Peace Offensive-President Wilson's Reply to Hertling and Czernin-Premier Lloyd George on the Central Powers' Views-Speeches by King George and Kaiser Wilhelm-Progress of the War-The Sinking of the Tuscania-America in the War-President Wilson to the Farmers-The Ukraine and Its Separate Peace-The Republic of Finland-Russia's Withdrawal from the War -The Dissolution of the Russian Armies-The Supreme War Council: Third Session-Strengthening the War Department-What America Has Done for France The Coal Crisis and "Heatless Days "-Case of the United States Against Germany-A German Exposure of the Hohenzollern Plot-Economic Distress in GermanyThe New Paris and Its Daily Life-Germany's Claim to Alsace Why Alsace-Lorraine Should Be Restored-Secret Treaty with Italy-The Serbian Mission in America -The Tragedy of the Lithuanians-How the War Transformed England-Full Text of General Haig's 1917 Report-General Review of the Summer's Fighting. Vol. XIV. Alexei to take the Ukraine under his protection; he finally consented in 1654, and, after a long war, the Ukraine was attached to Moscow as a semi-independent State. Two tendencies then became active in the Ukraine: a movement for more complete assimilation with the Russian realm; and a countermovement toward nationalism and practical independence both of Poland and Russia. Under Peter the Great, the son of Czar Alexei, Mazeppa headed a separatist movement in the year 1709, entering into an alliance with Charles XII. of Sweden, with whom Peter was at war. Peter completely triumphed over both his opponents. At first the Ukraine continued to elect its own Hetman, or Cossack Generalissimo, but the position gradually fell into abeyance as Russian administration extended itself throughout the Ukraine. Finally, under Catherine the Great, the Ukraine became an integral part of the Russian Empire, which it continued to be for a century and a quarter. But the old separatist movement never quite died out. It was always strongly supported by Austria as successor to Southern Poland, (Galicia,) and Lemberg was made a strong centre of Ukrainian, anti-Russian propaganda, the practical object of which was to bring under Austrian influence the southwestern corner of Russia. It thus happened that, I when the Russian Empire broke to pieces, there was a strong Ukrainian movement which was also strongly pro-Austrian; this led naturally to the separate peace with Austria, and to the annexation to Ukrainia of the Polish district of Kholm, which has a considerable proportion of Ukrainian inhabitants. was true particularly in the days of Michael the Brave, who, with Vlad the Impaler, receives almost divine honors in Rumanian tradition. Michael reigned in the closing days of the English Queen Elizabeth. The northward expansion of Turkey after the capture of Constantinople presently submerged the principalities, but fell short of the grinding tyranny suffered by the Serbians and Bulgarians. When, in the reign of Catherine the Great, the frontiers of Russia touched the margin of the Sultan's realm, the principalities became the inevitable battleground between Russian and Turk. By several treaties, Russia won considerable rights for the Rumanians, as by the treaty of Kutshuk Kainardji, in 1774. In 1808 the Russians once more occupied Wallachia and Moldavia, and, by the peace of Bucharest, in 1812, Bessarabia, which takes its name from the old Rumanian princely house of Bassarab, was ceded to Russia. In 1856, after the disastrous Crimean War, Russia was compelled to return to Turkey a strip of Bessarabia. Five years later the two principalities were practically separated from Turkey, and united under the name of Rumania. After the war of 1877, in which Russia advanced almost to the walls of Constantinople, the Czar wished to recover the strip of Bessarabia which Russia had held from 1812 to 1856, but had been compelled to relinquish during a period of twenty-one years. But this meant a loss of territory to Rumania, which had come into existence precisely in that interval, and Rumania never really forgave this, though nominally accepting as compensation the Dobrudja -the quadrangle below the mouths of the Danube. It was probably the loss of the Bessarabian strip which drove Rumania secretly to join Germany and Austria about 1883, and the possibility of regaining a part or the whole of Bessarabia may induce Rumania once more to make a treaty with the Central Empires. Bessarabia is genuinely Rumanian; if ethnical reasons are conclusive, then it should be rejoined to the Rumanian realm. THE LINES OF FRACTURE IN THE RUSSIAN REALM THE genuinely national Russia is bet ter described by its older title of Muscovy, or Moscovia, "the Land of Moscow," under which John Milton, author of "Paradise Lost," wrote an admirable history of that country, incorporating the very valuable records and vivid observations made by the early English expeditions to Russia by way of Georgians. Turkestan was added to Russia by a compaign under Skobeleff and Kuropatkin, thus completing the expansion of Russia to the southeast, in the direction of India. These additions, therefore, to Moscovia, mark the natural lines of fracture in the dissolution of the Russian Empire. The position of Siberia is somewhat different. * * * SIBERIA AND RUSSIA'S PACIFIC LITTORAL the White Sea, in the reigns of Edward IN Shakespeare's day the region east VI. and Queen Elizabeth. The region of which Moscow is the centre is uniform in race, language, and character; a genuine ethnical unit. From this central region the waves of conquest and expansion went north, west, south, and east during the whole three centuries of the Romanoff rule; and practically all that was thus added, since 1613, is not genuinely Russian in the ethnical sense. As a part of the movement which, in Milton's day, added the Ukraine to Moscovia, a war with Poland added to the dominion of the Czars the cities of Polotsk, Mohilev, and the rest of White Russia; Smolensk, Vilna, Grodno, Kovno, and the rest of Lithuania, as well as Lublin, which is distinctively Polish. The two partitions of Poland simply extended this movement further west. Dvinsk and Dorpat (Yuriev) were taken from Charles X. of Sweden during the same period; and the movement toward the northwest, (Courland, Esthonia, Livonia,) was completed by Peter the Great, when he conquered Charles XII. of Sweden. This region on the Baltic and Gulf of Finland has, therefore, been a part of Russia for just over two centuries. In 1809 Finland passed from Swedish to Russian suzerainty, rounding out the northwestern expansion. The story of the Ukraine, to the southwest, has already been told. East of the Ukraine the Russian conquest of the Mussulman Tartars of the Crimea Southern Volga was a slow process, lastand ing centuries; the conquest of the Caucasus was completed only in 1864; it included many tribes grouped under four nations: the Tartars and Circassians, both Mussulman; the Armenians and of the Ural Mountains was still under Tartar and Turcoman rule, the final stages of the great movement of expansion started by Genghis Khan in the early thirteenth century. The town of Sibir was the capital of the region nearest the Urals. A Cossack adventurer, Yermak, crossed the Urals about 1580, in the reign of John the Terrible, almost the last ruler of the old dynasty of Rurik. He captured Sibir and offered the territory to the Russian Czar. By 1628 the Russians had reached the River Lena. In 1637 they built the fort of Yakutsk. Between 1631 and 1641 they fought the Buddhist Buryats about Lake Baikal, where there is now a ferry of the Siberian Railroad. In 1650 Khabarov reached the Amur, which flows into the Pacific. But the Chinese blocked Russian advance in this direction for just two centuries. In 1648 the Cossack Dejnev, sailing from the River Kolyma, (160° east longitude,) reached the strait later named after Bering, who rediscovered it in 1728. In 1741 Captain Vitus Bering and Chirikov explored Alaska, which then became Russian territory and so remained for a century and a quarter. In 1784 a Russian settlement was established at Kodiak. In 1852 Muraviev explored the Amur and immediate Russian colonization followed, China recognizing Russian occupation by treaty in 1860, while the explorer received the title of Count Muraviev of the Amur. Finally, while Count Cassini was Russia's representative at Peking, a treaty gave Russia certain advantages in Manchuria, with a terminal at Port Arthur, which Russia lost in the Japanese war of 1905, with the southern half of the bleak island of Sakhalin. There was an ironical pro posal to confer on the statesman who negotiated the peace with Japan the title of Count Witte of Half-Sakhalin. Taking the more than 4,000,000 square miles of Siberia, with its population not much larger than that of Scotland, more than 80 per cent. of its inhabitants are of Russian blood, while there are about a million natives remote kindred of the Aleuts and Eskimo. But these native tribes can hardly be called nations. They are more accurately an ethnical museum. IT JUNIOR OFFICERS' PAY T was announced in London, in the middle of January, that the War Cabinet had decided to increase the pay of junior officers in the British Army and Navy, the principle adopted being that the minimum rate for an army officer should be half a guinea, or 10s. and 6d. a day. For convenience in comparison, we give the equivalents of the new rates of British Army pay in American money, taking the pound sterling as equal to $4.80, or taking the cent as equal to a halfpenny. Under the new scale, the pay of British junior officers will be: In the middle of February Mr. Baker, Secretary of War, requested the Chairmen of the Military Affairs Committees of Congress to provide legislation immediately granting certain allowances to all officers on field service in the United States and in foreign lands, which will practically amount to increased pay. It was found that an officer doing desk duty in Washington received allowances, while an officer living in a tent in France received nothing but his pay; for example, a Colonel occupying a chair in the War Department receives pay of $444.14 a month, while a Colonel in camp or in France receives $333.33, or a quarter less. The monthly pay of American officers DETA * Monthly Pay. . $141.67 166.67 200.00 250.00 291,67 REVOLUTIONARY EUSSIA'S FINANCES ETAILS have just been received in this country of a statement made by M. Nekrasoff, then Minister of Finance, at the Moscow Conference in August, 1917-details which shed a somewhat ominous light upon the internal situation of Russia, as expressed in financial terms. During the war months of 1914, the issue of Russian paper money amounted to $109,500,000 per month; during 1915 it amounted to $111,500,000 per month; during 1916 to $145,000,000 a month; during the five revolutionary months, from March to August, 1917, the issue of paper money rose to the enormous sum of $416,000,000 per month, from three to four times that under the Imperial Government. At the same time, said M. Nekrasoff, all revenue enormously declined during the first months of the revolution; in August it had almost completely ceased; and the Minister of Finance went on to say that any measures of confiscation or expropriation of capital or real estate would lead to the complete disappearance of revenue, and would react disastrously upon the people at large. Further, the revolution had almost stopped the output of textiles, so that, it was stated at the Moscow Conference, the total visible supply of cotton cloths in August, 1917, amounted to only seven inches of material per head of the Russian population. So the peasants had to go about in rags or skins, reverting to the costume of the cave man. The cities of Russia are now living on the money and food set apart for the armies which have been disbanded. When these come to an end, no alternative to starvation seems to exist. Even the villages will suffer greatly, owing to the huge areas left uncultivated. The Petrograd Soviet pay roll was $350,000 monthly. |