It appears that Germany has been making further attempts to encourage the separatist tendency in Russia, in contravention of the Brest treaty. The German Government is reported to have inquired of the local Crimean authorities concerning the nationalization of their flag. The Bolsheviki interpreted this step as indicative of the German desire to separate the Taurida Republic from the Russian Federation.
According to a communication issued by the Rumanian Chargé d'Affaires, the National Assembly of Bessarabia voted, on April 9, the union of the province to Rumania by 86 against 3. Thereupon, the Rumanian Premier, amid enthusiastic acclamation, proclaimed the union to be "definitive and indissoluble," and a delegation was sent to Jassy to present the homage of the people of Bessarabia to the King. Rumania seems to have acted at the suggestion of Germany. It is known that the latter proposed to Rumania to annex a part of Bessarabia and thus compensate herself for Rumanian territory taken by Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria. It is also known that (on March 22?) Russia signed a treaty with Rumania regarding Bessarabia. The province was to be evacuated by the Rumanian troops, which had occupied it at the request of the population, and the guarding of Bessarabia was to pass into the hands of local militia, while all evacuated places were to be immediately occupied by Russian troops. Russia undertook to leave Rumania the surplus of Bessarabian grain remaining after the local population and Russian troops had been provided for. The Ukrainian Government refused to recognize the step taken by Bessarabia.
According to the terms of the Brest treaty the Baltic Provinces Esthonia and Livonia were to remain under Russian sovereignty, but three weeks later Germany began intriguing for a union of these countries with the Kingdom of Russia. The falsity of the assertion that the people of Esthonia favored a Baltic monarchy was exposed by the following protest of the Esthonian Provisional Government, published April 22:
Regarding the communication from Berlin that the joint Landtag of Esthonia, Livonia, Riga, and Oesel has decided upon the separation of Baltic provinces from Russia and the creation of a Baltic monarchy in personal union with Prussia, I declare, as representative of the Esthonian Republic, that this resolution does not constitute an expression of opinion of the Esthonian people, but only that of a German nobility minority and its adherents.
On May 5 the British Government informally recognized the Esthonian Provisional Government and, in the words of Mr. Balfour's communication, reaffirmed their readiness to grant provisional recognition to the Esthonian National Council as a de facto independent body until the peace conference, when the future status of Esthonia ought to be settled as far as possible in accordance with the wishes of the population."
On April 26 Transcaucasia declared its independence under a conservative Government, headed by M. Chkhemkeli.
Count von Mirbach, the Royal German Ambassador to Russia, accompanied by a Turkish representative, arrived in Moscow on April 23. He was welcomed by the Chairman of the Central Executive Committee as "a representative of a power with which a peace treaty has been concluded at Brest-Litovsk, as a result of which peace, so needed by the people, was established between the two States." Pravda, the official Bolshevist daily, greeted the Royal German Ambassador as "the plenipotentiary of an armed band which with limitless audacity oppresses and robs wherever it is able to thrust in with a bloody imperialistic bayonet."
ULTIMATUM ON PRISONERS
Germany has shown eagerness to obtain the release and the use of the able-bodied German prisoners who are now in Russia. It is believed that there are at present upward of 1,000,000 German prisoners of war in European Russia and Siberia. It was reported on April 27 that a special German commission had arrived in Moscow to take charge of the exchange of prisoners with Russia, and that exchanges of invalids had already begun. The number of Russians in German hands is estimated at 3,000,000. An earlier official German communication explained the delay in repatriating Russians by the lack of transportation facilities. On April 29 the State Department at Washington gave out the following statement:
The Department of State has learned that there will shortly leave for Russia a German commission, consisting of 115 members, which will take up the question of the exchange of Russian and German prisoners. It is reported that it is the purpose of the commission merely to present to the Russian authorities an ultimatum from Germany requiring, first, the immediate release of all German prisoners who are in good health; second, that those who are ill will remain in Russia under the care of neutral physicians, and, third, that the Germans on their side will release only those Russian prisoners in Germany who are invalids or who are incapacitated. In the event of a refusal on the part of Russia, Germany will order that Petrograd be taken.