On April 22, Leon Trotzky made a report to the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets on the newly organized Russian Army. He defended the employment of officers of the old army on the ground that they were just as valuable as the military property taken over by the Soviet Government, and pointed out the eventual necessity of conscription. According to a London dispatch, dated June 8, the Soviet Government decided to introduce conscription. "One of the most promising things," said a Bolshevist diplomat in an interview on June 5, "is the steady growth of the new Red army. Its discipline already is better than that of the old one. Its members have so far been recruited from town and factory workers. * * * We take measures to provide for military training in villages and towns and all necessary steps toward raising the fighting capacity of our new army, which already is by no means negligible."

BOLSHEVIKI AND THE JEWS

A statement bearing on the situation of the Russian Jews under the Bolshevist régime was issued by the celebrated Russian jurist and former Senator, Oscar Grusenberg, and made public on June 10. The document follows:

Those who think that the Jews are at present ruling Russia are profoundly mistaken. The new laws, or rather administrative regulations, which the Bolsheviki have promulgated, have hurt the Jewish population more than other citizens, for the Bolshevist legislation has ruined the commerce and industry of the country.

After the Bolshevist insurrection we lived through events similar to those of October, 1905. In October, 1917, pogroms occurred in 200 Jewish towns and hamlets.

The tragedy of the Jews in Russia is heart-breaking. The united Russian Jewry, counting upward of 6,000,000, exists no longer. With the secession of the Ukraine, Lithuania, and Poland, the number of Jews in Russia is reduced to a million and a half. The situation of the Jews in the Ukraine, and particularly in Poland and Lithuania, under German domination, is very sad. The Jews have lost in this war, in killed and wounded, the majority of their youth. A great many Jewish soldiers are pining in prison camps, others are locked up in jails on slanderous charges of treason.

The Jews are almost the only nationality in Russia which, by every means available, is seeking to arrest the process of splitting up the Russian Empire, and which works for the reunion of the portions that have seceded.

Hundreds of thousands of Russian Jews were ruined at the moment when the Bolsheviki took over the Governmental power. The population visited its wrath on the Jews, because some of the Bolshevist leaders are or are said to be Jews. But the Russian Empire has been demoralized, not by the Jews, but by the old régime. Russia lacks great leaders with heroic characters, who know how to act in an hour of distress. This made possible the triumph of men like Lenine and Trotzky.

The Jewish leaders of the Bolsheviki are themselves a product of the old régime. Czarism persecuted and exiled them. Education they were forced to seek abroad, and there, in foreign lands, they lost all connection with and love for Judaism and Russia. Every country is to them but a railroad station. It is these former Jews and present Bolshevists that are responsible for the appalling misery which has befallen the Russian Jews.

ANTI-BOLSHEVIST MOVEMENTS

An official French dispatch received in Washington on May 16 asserted that the opposition to the Soviet régime was growing stronger. On June 2 a Russian wireless message announced the discovery of a vast counter-revolutionary conspiracy, with ramifications throughout the country. Moscow was declared in a state of siege, a large number of persons were arrested, and stringent measures were taken to restrain the press. Boris Savinkov, Chief of the War Department under Kerensky, and Prince Kropotkin, the famous revolutionist and writer, were reported to have taken part in the conspiracy. A week later a Moscow dispatch reported that factory workers were boycotting Soviet delegates, that some provincial towns elected anti-Bolshevist Deputies to the Soviets, and that a general political strike appeared imminent.

In the middle of May the Central Committee of the Russian Social Revolutionary Party addressed to the National Council of the French Socialist Party and to the Parliamentary Socialist group the following message:

The Bolshevist Government, which exists but by the grace of our German masters, assumes, under the pressure of Germany's Ambassador, a provoking attitude toward the allied powers, and particularly toward France, addressing to them insulting ultimatums which are in striking contrast with the servile docility they manifest in executing the orders of German imperialism. The Russian Social Revolutionary Party sends its socialist greetings to the French section of the Labor International, and protests against the spirit of the foreign policy of the present dictators of Russia.

The Social Revolutionary Party declares at the same time that the newly formed Communist group, formerly Bolsheviki, must on all accounts be excluded from the International for having called upon the most elementary principles of democracy to resuscitate forms of despotism and violence. They have betrayed the cause of international socialism by an infamous separate peace with the crowned despots of Central Europe, transforming Russia, disarmed, humiliated, and crushed, into an administrative supply house destined to sustain the German offensive in the west.

The Social Revolutionary Party expresses the hope that all the national sections of the Labor International will determine their attitude as regards the Bolshevist usurpers, taking into consideration this declaration of our party, which itself has the right to speak for all Russian labor, having held an absolute majority in the Constitutional Convention, whose powers will be resuscitated in spite of the sanguinary repressions made by the usurpers of power. We beg our French comrades to send this declaration to the Socialist parties of the allied countries.

FIGHTING IN SIBERIA

Armed opposition to the Soviet Government was confined chiefly to Eastern Siberia. In the first week of June clashes occurred in Transbaikalia between the Government troops and the anti-Bolshevist forces led by General Semenoff. The Soviet troops were apparently mastering the situation. It was reported that they included armed Teuton prisoners, and that General Semenoff was expecting Japanese reinforcements. The other leaders of anti-Bolshevist forces, Admiral Kolchak, Colonel Orloff, and General Kalmakoff, co-operated in protecting the railways and massed their troops, which include Russians and Chinese, for an offensive. The Soviet Government repeatedly protested to China against the assistance it had given to General Semenoff, requesting that the Chinese Government should either close the Manchurian frontier to the General's forces or permit the Bolshevist troops to cross into Manchuria and subdue the rebel. On May 25 Ambassador Francis published a statement from Secretary Lansing to the effect that American Consuls had given no aid to General Semenoff, or any other anti-Bolshevist leader. The message contained an assurance of "the friendly purposes of the United States toward Russia, which will remain unaltered so long as Russia does not willingly accept autocratic domination by the Central Powers."