In a speech on April 27 Baron Shimpei Goto, the new Japanese Foreign Minister, referred to the malevolent propaganda which is being conducted in Russia with a view to creating an estrangement between Japan and Russia. He expressed the view that "Russia is a power endeavoring to reorganize a machine temporarily out of order," adding: "Japan must give encouragement, assistance, and support to the work of reorganization in Russia. We trust the sound sense of the Russian people will not be misled by reports calculated to keep the two neighbors apart."
Shortly after the capture of Sebastopol the Russian Government protested to Germany against the seizure of the Black Sea fleet and the invasion of the Crimea. The Russian note pointed out that these acts were in contravention of the Brest treaty and that they might endanger the peaceful relations between the two countries. The Germans did not seem to be concerned to maintain these relations. They treated the population of the occupied territories with harshness. Starving refugees were not admitted into the regions under their domination. It was reported that in the Government of Minsk able-bodied persons were seized in the streets and sent to Germany in locked cars. Constant food requisitioning was another feature of the German rule in Russia.
RUSSIA'S PROTEST
On April 15 M. Chicherin, Russian Commissary for Foreign Affairs, protested to Berlin against the outrages committed by the German troops in Russia. The text of the note follows:
The Central Soviet institutions receive many complaints with regard to German troops burning Russian villages and using violence against Russian inhabitants. An eyewitness well known to us and absolutely trustworthy states that at Lepel, northwest of Mogileff, German soldiers killed a whole family, not sparing women and children, on the plea that one of the family belonged to a partisan detachment. The local military authorities state that at the village of Novoselki, Mogileff, on April 5, there appeared an officer and soldiers of the 346th Regiment and took oats from the inhabitants by force. The officer was killed by the peasants, and the soldiers fled. After this the village was surrounded by the soldiers, fired on by machine guns, and burned.
The following day the German commander sent a notice to the Russian military authorities at Orsha saying that the inhabitants of Novoselki had been ejected, and the village burned owing to a German officer's being killed.
MAP OF THE UKRAINE AND OTHER REGIONS OF RUSSIA NOW UNDER GERMAN DOMINATION
Observers of Russian life agree that feelings of resentment and animosity on the part of the Russian population for the German oppressor are steadily growing throughout the country. At the same time good feeling between the Russians and the Allies, especially the Americans, is on the increase. British and French troops are co-operating with Bolshevist forces in defending against Finns and Germans the Murman seacoast and the railway from the interior of Russia to the arctic ports of Alexandrovsk and Archangel, where large supplies of valuable war materials are stored up. The War Council attached to the Murman local Soviet consists of one Russian, one Englishman, and one Frenchman. The landing of the allied troops at Alexandrovsk the Germans regarded as a violation of the Brest treaty, which provides for peace with Finland, and protested to the Moscow Government against the act.
The constant exchange of protests between Berlin and Moscow is partly caused by the ambiguous wording of the Brest treaty. On April 24 Adolf Joffe, the Bolshevist Ambassador in Berlin, telegraphed to Moscow that the Russian translation of the treaty was considered by the German authorities incorrect, and that the publication of the final draft of the document was postponed until the receipt of an authentic version.