On the previous day the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets unanimously passed a resolution ruling that henceforth Russia's national flag would be a red banner bearing the inscription: "Rossiyskaya, Sotzialisticheskaya Federativnaya Sovetskaya Respublika," (Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic.) Proposing the measure, the Chairman said: "The Russian flag will have to wave over the embassies in Berlin and Vienna and we cannot have the old tricolor, so I think it most proper to adopt the red flag under which we fought and gained victory."
BESSARABIA AND RUMANIA
An important event has taken place in the southwestern corner of the former Russian Empire, in the rich province of Bessarabia, where separatist tendencies have recently made themselves strongly felt. A Berlin dispatch, dated April 11, announced that the Bessarabian Diet had voted, 86 against 5, that Bessarabia should join the Kingdom of Rumania. Thereupon, the Ukrainian Premier filed a protest in Russia against this act, stating that the Ukraine must have her say in the settlement of Bessarabia's fate in view of the fact that this province has a large Ukrainian population and that the Ukraine is controlling an important region on the Black Sea adjacent to Bessarabia.
The Council of the People's Commissaries was notified on April 9 that the Province of Kazan, situated in the east of European Russia and having a population of 2,000,000, had been proclaimed an independent republic by the Congress of Peasants of that region.
RUSSIA AND THE ALLIES
The Entente did not acknowledge the Russo-German peace. In a statement issued March 18 through the British Foreign Office the Governments of Great Britain, France, and Italy voiced their protest against "the political crimes which, under the name of a German peace, have been committed against the Russian people." Ambassador David R. Francis, when asked whether he would leave Russia in consequence of the ratification of the peace treaty, gave the following reply:
I shall not leave Russia until compelled by force. The American Government and people are too deeply interested in the prosperity of the Russian people for them to abandon Russia to the Germans. America is sincerely interested in the liberty of the Russian people and will do everything possible to safeguard the real interests of the country.
If the brave and patriotic Russian people will forget political differences for the time being and act resolutely and vigorously, they will be able to drive the enemy from their territory, and by the end of 1918 bring a lasting peace for themselves and the whole world. America still counts itself an ally of the Russian people, and we shall be ready to help any Government which organizes a vigorous resistance to the German invasion.
The French, Japanese, Chinese, Italian, Serbian, Belgian, Brazilian, Greek, Portuguese, and Siamese representatives, who left Russia when the treaty with Germany was signed, joined the American Ambassador (who did not leave the country) at Vologda, 300 miles northeast of Moscow, late in March. A dispatch dated March 20 says: "There has been a marked change in the attitude of the Allies toward the Soviet Government. * * * There are many signs of renewed co-operation between Russia and the Allies." The dispatch also quotes M. Chicherin, the Bolshevist Foreign Minister, as saying that "Russia's relations with the Entente are unchanged."
At the same time Trotzky approached the American military mission, established in Moscow, asking it to assist Russia in organizing a volunteer army and in improving the country's transportation. On March 27 the Petit Parisien published a statement to the effect that Trotzky had also asked the French to assist him in organizing military resistance to the Germans. A leading article in Premier Clemenceau's L'Homme Libre contained the following statement: "The Entente, as long as the war lasts, will regard Russia, the one and indivisible Russia which signed the pact of London, as an ally."