yer, were also arrested as Caillaux's accomplices.

With Caillaux now in prison, the trial of Bolo Pacha proceeded, and was concluded on Feb. 14, when he was found guilty of having received large sums of money from German sources and having undertaken to purchase or corrupt French newspapers for the purpose of creating internal unrest and disaffection and thus discouraging the prosecution of the war. Bolo was sentenced to death, as was Filippo Cavallino, one of his associates, who was under arrest in Italy. Porchère, another of Bolo's associates, was sentenced to three years' imprisonment.

Still another prominent personality in French public life, Senator Charles Humbert, proprietor of the Paris newspaper, Le Journal, was arrested on Feb. 18 and charged with treason as a result of his alleged dealings with Bolo Pacha. Le Journal was the principal newspaper over which Bolo was accused of trying to gain control for the purposes of “ Defeatist" propaganda.

GERMANY AND AUSTRIA

A serious but ineffectual attempt was made in Germany at the end of January to bring about a working-class revolt against the Government and force it to make peace. Three Independent Socialist members of the Reichstag, Wilhelm Dittman, George Ledebour, and Hugo Haase, took the lead in the strikes which broke out in various parts of Germany; but the authorities were well able to handle the situation, and the movement was rapidly suppressed by military force. Dittman was arrested while trying to address a crowd of strikers in Berlin and tried by court-martial on charges of inciting to high treason, resistance to public authority, and disobeying the prohibition against participating in the direction of the general strike. He was sentenced to five years' imprisonment, a severer penalty than that which had been meted out to Karl Liebknecht. Dittman was also one of the three Reichstag Deputies accused by the German Minister of Marine of having abetted the mutiny in the navy in the Summer of 1917.

In Austria and Hungary popular discontent also found expression in a number of strikes, which for a time appeared full of menace to the ruling classes. But, while these disturbances were quelled, there was no improvement in the sufferings of the people, who daily had to bear an increasing burden of hunger and oppression. It was this state of affairs that made Emperor Karl so eager for peace and so quick to grasp every opportunity that presented itself for ending the war.

RUSSIA

Russia, now under the direct rule of the working classes, expressing themselves through their councils, or Soviets, had now set out to transform society according to the principles of Socialism, despite the difficulties attending such an enterprise when the nation was still, nominally at least, at war and faced by other nations dominated by the interests of autocracy. Before dealing with the external policy of the Bolsheviki, the Left Wing of the Social Democratic Party, to whom the Russian workers had intrusted the Central Government, it is necessary to survey the class struggle which convulsed the internal life of the country.

The struggle for power between the bourgeoisie and the workers came to an issue on the question of the Constituent Assembly. The Bolsheviki were opposed to such a body deciding the future Government of Russia or having any hand in the shaping of national policies, on the ground that it was the expression of the ideals of bourgeois society, which were no longer necessary in a Socialist state. According to Lenine, the Russian proletariat by creating a Government of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates had established the only kind of Government that was necessary.

The election of delegates to the Constituent Assembly had nevertheless taken place on Nov. 25, 1917. The Social Revolutionists, with 420 out of a total of 783 delegates, had gained a majority over all other parties. and for this reason the Bolsheviki, who had succeeded in electing only 225 delegates, did all in their power to delay the meeting of the

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Assembly A number of the anti-Bolshevist members were arrested, and other measures were taken to prevent the bourgeois elements from consolidating their forces into a powerful opposition.

The Constituent Assembly, however: was ultimately permitted to meet, and on Jan. 18, 1918, something over the required quorum of 400 members gathered in Petrograd. Victor Tchernoff, who had been Minister of Agriculture in the Kerensky Cabinet, was elected Chairman by the Social Revolutionist majority. The Bolsheviki, finding that they could not control the Assembly, and foreseeing that it was inevitably developing into a menace to their rule, withdrew, and the next day, Jan. 19, compelled it by armed force to adjourn. This was followed by a decree issued by the Central Executive Committee of the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates dissolving the Assembly, which thereupon passed out of existence, leaving the supreme power in the hands of the Soviets. In this way, for the first time in history, political control over a great nation was seized by the labor unions.

The first step toward the creation of a Socialist Commonwealth was a decree abolishing private ownership in land. This decree was elaborated by the third All-Russian Congress of the Councils of Workmen's, Soldiers', and Peasants' Delegates, which met in February. All the forests, mines, waters, and landed estates, with their live stock, buildings, and machinery, were declared the common property of the people.

In the industrial sphere the process of socialization was slower and more varied, the main tendency being toward what is generally known as syndicalism. In some cases the employers or proprietors were entirely dispossessed and thrown out, but in others they were permitted to remain and conduct operations in cooperation with committees representing the workers. While the Soviets in the towns exercised the political authority and controlled civic affairs, workers' organizations specially created for industrial purposes took general charge of the factories and plants. These organ

izations were in turn co-ordinated under superior bodies for larger areas, and these in turn were under the Central Government of the Soviets. In the new scheme of industrial democracy there was every variety of State socialism, communism, and voluntary cooperation, according to the varying character of the different industries, the needs of the different localities, and other special conditions.

The matter of finance was treated by the Bolshevist Cabinet first by repudiating all the national loans issued under the imperial and bourgeois-revolutionary régimes. Only the short-term loans and the series of the National Treasury were declared valid. Secondly, the banking system was nationalized, all the private banks and similar institutions being amalgamated with the State Bank. All gold coin and bullion were confiscated and transferred to the State Bank.

The Military Revolutionary Committee, assisted by subsidiary local commissions, adopted drastic measures intended to suppress food speculation. At length, recognizing that their power must be supported by armed force, the Bolshevist Cabinet set about securing some military protection. Two principles were adopted: First, that the proletariat must be armed and the bourgeoisie disarmed; second, that reorganization of the old army was hopeless to think of. Accordingly, the "Red Army' was created, the nucleus being the Red Guard which Kerensky had formed at the time of the so-called Korniloff rebellion by distributing 14,000 rifles among the workmen of Petrograd. On Jan. 27, 1918, a special commission was appointed to organize the Red Army out of the most revolutionary elements of the working classes, but the result was practically nil.

The abolition of all ranks and titles, the confiscation of the corporate property of nobles, merchants, and burgesses, the replacement of the old judicial system by revolutionary tribunals, the separation of Church and State, the sequestration of Church property, and the secularization of the schools were some of the other acts of the Soviet Government.

It needs to be added that the extent to

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which many of these revolutionary decrees were put into practice depended upon the power to crush opposition in the different parts of Russia. In some large and important areas the bourgeoisie were successful in resisting the Bolsheviki, and the Soviets in those regions were unable to introduce their social ideas.

The right of all peoples to self-determination was a leading doctrine proclaimed by the Bolsheviki, but, according to Lenine, it did not encourage the formation of small States; on the contrary, he professed to believe that it led to the freer, more fearless, and, therefore, more extensive and general formation of large States and unions of States more in harmony with economic development. The conception of the legal separation of nations, Lenine held, was a reactionary conception. Nevertheless, it was this conception that influenced the course of events in the Ukraine and Finland.

The Ukraine embraced originally the four Russian guberniyas, or provinces, of Tchernigov, Kiev, Poltava, and Kharkov, with an area of 80,000 square miles and a population of 25,000,000, but laid claim not only to a large part of Southwestern Russia, but also to portions of East Galicia, Northeastern Hungary, and Bukowina, an increase to 195,000 square miles with a population of 45,000,000. After the overthrow of the Czar, a National Assembly called the Central Ukrainian Rada had been set up with a General Secretariat as the Executive. The Russian Provisional Governments of Lvov and Kerensky had had friction with the Rada and had eventually agreed to recognize the autonomy of the Ukraine on condition that its future Constitution was left to be settled by the Russian Constituent Assembly. When the Bolsheviki came into power in November, 1917, a new and much more serious conflict began with the Ukrainian Government, which the Bolsheviki denounced as bourgeois.

The upshot was that the Rada on Nov. 20 declared Ukrainia a national republic and fixed the date for a Ukrainian Constituent Assembly to meet for the purpose of co-operating with the Russian

Constituent Assembly in devising a Constitution which would permit Ukrainia to work out its national destiny within an All-Russian federal union.

The determination of the Bolsheviki to destroy bourgeois Governments everywhere immediately precipitated a conflict, and fighting began. On Dec. 17 the Bolshevist Government delivered an ultimatum to the Rada demanding that it break with the counter-revolution and with Kaledine and his Don Cossacks. The ultimatum was ignored and civil war between the two republics was formally begun on Dec. 18, although actual hostilities had been in progress for several weeks.

Disastrous as this struggle was to both Russia and Ukrainia, it was the intervention of the latter in the peace negotiations between the Central Powers and Russia that inflicted the greatest injury upon the Russian and Ukrainian peoples directly and upon the western allies indirectly. Ukrainia, demanding separate representation at the peace conference, sent delegates to the second session which opened at Brest-Litovsk on Jan. 10. There a declaration was read pointing out that Russia had entered into an armistice without previous agreement with Ukrainia. The Central Powers eagerly welcomed the Ukrainians, and Trotzky was compelled to recognize them as a separate and independent delegation, the error of which step he realized when he discovered that the Ukrainians were conducting secret negotiations for a separate peace with the Central Powers and thus destroying Russia's united front in the diplomatic struggle.

The Ukrainian movement had long been encouraged by Austria and Germany, ostensibly as a counterblast to Russian persecution under the Czar's régime. Lemberg had been a refuge and the intellectual centre of Ukrainians from Kiev. In the Government of the Ukrainian Republic there was a considerable section with Austro-German sympathies and bonds of common interest, and, though prominent Ukrainians had gone to Petrograd in August, 1917, to clear themselves of charges of complicity in

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German intrigues, the Ukrainian delegates were far readier to make peace with the Central Powers than were the anti-bourgeois and anti-imperialist Russians at Brest-Litovsk. This will be seen later when we come to the break-up of the peace conference on the signing of a separate peace between the Ukrainian People's Republic and the Central Powers on Feb. 9, 1918.

When it became known in Poland that under this treaty the Kholm district, a part of the Polish domain, had been ceded to Ukrainia, a great wave of indignation swept through Poland. The Polish, Czech, Slavic, and Socialist Deputies in the Austrian Parliament joined to protest and threatened to unite and vote against further credits for the war. The opposition became so formidable that the Austro-Hungarian and German Foreign Ministers agreed to modify the treaty, and on Feb. 18 a supplementary treaty was signed by Austria-Hungary and Ukrainia providing that the district of Kholm was not to be ceded until a mixed commission of Poles and Ukrainians met and agreed on a new boundary. In the protest against the cession of Kholm the Polish Regency Council, which had been set up by the German and Austro-Hungarian Governments, took a determined stand and was partly instrumental in preventing the loss of the territory.

The turn of events in Finland also added to the causes which were disintegrating Russia and making it more difficult than ever for the Bolshevist leaders to succeed. Here, as in Ukrainia, international issues were submerged in the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. On Dec. 7, 1917, Finland declared itself an independent republic, and two days later the Finnish Diet assumed sovereign power. One of the grounds for dissolving the union with Russia was the state of anarchy which had followed the seizure of power by the Russian Soviets. Finland, as a separate State, was recognized by Sweden, France, Norway, Denmark, Germany, and finally, on Jan. 9, 1918, by the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets. Meanwhile, the Finnish proletariat, acting under the inspiration of the Bolsheviki, had begun

a class war. The Diet was under the control of the bourgeois elements, and to overthrow their rule the Red Guard of the Workers was organized, being supplied with its military equipment by the Russian revolutionary soldiers, some of whom took part in the fighting.

The Government troops, aided by the White Guard, which was organized by the propertied classes, began a vigorous campaign and occupied Uleaborg and Tammerfors on Feb. 6 and Viborg on Feb. 8. Since the Red Guards were still strong in other parts of the country, the Finnish bourgeoisie turned to Germany for help. On Feb. 21 German troops were landed in Finland. A couple of weeks later a treaty of peace between Germany and Finland was signed, and the combined forces of the Finnish bourgeoisie and the German expedition commenced a campaign of wholesale slaughter of the Red Guards and of the revolutionary working-class leaders. While the Finnish bourgeoisie had the satisfaction of seeing their enemies at home wiped out, Finland itself steadily passed under German control, to such an extent, indeed, that the proposal was made to set up a monarchy under a Prince appointed by the Kaiser.

Having now seen what happened to those parts of Russia which had been lost by conquest or secession and come under the domination of the Central Empires, we return to the situation in Russia itself, where the revolutionary proletariat was supreme and determined to bring the war to an end. While the new Government was able to keep the bourgeoisie in check, Russia was seriously handicapped by the attitude of the bourgeois Governments of Ukrainia and Finland. The Soviet Government set about making a separate peace when the western allies refused to participate in the negotiations. According to the Bolsheviki, whose views on this point were expressed by Trotzky, their Foreign Minister, Russia was being left at the mercy of the Central Powers so that the latter could recoup themselves for yielding in the west at the expense of Russia. This certainly did not apply to the United States, for during the period of the nego

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