AERIAL RECORD
The London area was raided on May 19. Forty-four persons were killed and 179 wounded. Five German airplanes were brought down by the British.
On May 22 the Germans made an ineffectual attempt to raid Paris. Three persons were killed and several were injured in the outskirts of the city, and one German machine was brought down. In another raid, on May 23, one German machine succeeded in reaching the city. One woman was killed and twelve persons injured. The city was raided again on June 1 and June 2, and several persons were wounded.
Cologne was raided by allied airplanes on May 18. Fourteen persons were killed and forty injured. On the nights of May 21 and May 22 British aviators bombed railway stations in German Lorraine, a chloride factory in Mannheim, and the railway near Liége. In an allied air raid over Liége, on May 26, the railway station was destroyed and twenty-six persons were killed. Karlsruhe was bombed by the British on June 1, and tons of explosives were dropped on Metz, Seblon, and other towns. Twenty-seven German machines were downed. Metz and Seblon were again attacked on June 6. During the period from May 30 to June 12 the British carried out many raids against Bruges, Zeebrugge, and Ostend. On June 13 British aerial squadrons made raids into Germany, bombarding the railway station at Treves, in Rhenish Prussia, and factories at Dillingen, Bavaria.
A British official statement issued May 21 announced that 1,000 German planes had been downed in two months.
On the night of May 19 four squadrons of German airplanes raided British hospitals behind the battlelines in France. Hundreds of persons were killed or wounded. Hospitals containing French and American wounded were again raided on the nights of May 29 and May 31. One nurse was killed, several persons were injured, and a number of civilians died of their wounds.
Two hundred and fifty-two German airplanes were brought down by allied aviators on the western front in the week ended May 23. In the first two days of June the French downed fifty-seven German machines and dropped 130 tons of explosives in the battle area. British airmen destroyed or damaged 518 German airplanes and seven observation balloons in the month of May.
Major Raoul Lufbery, the foremost American air fighter, was killed May 19 in a combat with a German armored biplane back of the American sector north of Toul. The plane which brought him down was later downed by a Frenchman.
On May 25 announcement was made that the first airplanes to be furnished to the American Army from the United States had arrived in France and were in use in a training camp.
The first American bombing squadron to operate behind the front raided the Baroncourt railway on June 14, at a point northwest of Briey and returned safely in spite of German attacks. A second excursion was made later in the day, when the railway station and adjoining buildings at Conflans were bombed.
NAVAL RECORD
An official announcement was made on May 23 that the British Government had on May 15 established a new mine field between the Norwegian and Scotch coasts.
One Austrian dreadnought, the Szent Istvan, was sunk by two Italian torpedo boats off the Dalmatian coast June 10, and a second was badly damaged.
RUSSIA
On May 23 General Semenoff established an autonomous Government in the Trans-Baikal region, after a report of a quarrel with Admiral Kolchak. The Bolshevist Foreign Minister, Tchitcherin, sent a protest to China on May 26 charging the Chinese Government with officially protecting General Semenoff in his activities against the Soviet power.
The Germans continued their advance into Ukraine, and on May 25 broke the armistice on the Voronezh front, in spite of the truce between Russia and the Ukraine, and occupied Valuiki after four days' fighting. Atrocious methods were used in reprisal for disorders among the peasants. On May 31 several villages near Kiev were drenched with gas.
The Bolshevist Foreign Minister, Tchitcherin, protested to France on May 29 against the further retention of Russian troops on the French front.
The Chinese Government informed Tchitcherin on May 29 that it was unable to admit Russian Soviet councils in China because the Soviet Government had not been recognized by China.
On May 29 announcement was made that a new Cossack Government had been set up in the Don country with General Krasnoff at the head. His first proclamation announced that the Austro-Germans had entered the territory to aid in the fight against the Red Guard and for the establishment of order.
The Bolshevist Government offered to surrender the Russian Black Sea fleet to Germany on condition that the warships be restored to Russia after peace had been declared and that the Germans refrain from using the vessels, June 6.
Several moves were made looking toward intervention by the Allies to save Russia from complete domination by Germany. A military agreement between China and Japan relating to the expedition into Siberia was signed on June 2. On June 10 Senator William H. King introduced a resolution in the United States Senate proposing that a civilian commission be sent to Russia, backed by an allied military force, for the purpose of overcoming German propaganda and to aid in giving freedom to the country. The Russian Ambassador at Washington, Boris Bakhmeteff, presented to the State Department on June 11 a resolution adopted by the Central Committee of the Cadet Party of Russia urging allied intervention.
June 18—Further advances into Russia by the Germans in contravention of Brest treaty.
FINLAND
General Mannerheim, Commander in Chief of the Finnish White Guards, resigned on May 23 because of the plan of the Finnish Conservatives to invade the Russian Province of Karelia.
The Cabinet resigned on May 25 as a result of the appointment of former Premier Zvinhufvud as temporary dictator. M. Paasikivi, a member of the old Finnish party and a former Senator, was asked by the dictator to form a Cabinet.
On June 2 Russia agreed with Germany that she would accept proposals for the regularization of her relations with Finland.
A Swedish Socialist paper, according to a dispatch printed in The London Times of June 3, published a statement that a secret treaty existed between Finland and Germany whereby the Finnish Government undertook to establish a monarchy under a German dynasty, to place the Finnish Army under German leadership, to allow Finland to be used as a passageway to the arctic and the Aland Islands as a naval base. Later reports announced that Prince Oscar, the fifth son of the German Emperor, would probably be the ruler.
On June 12, the Government proposal for the establishment of a monarchy with a hereditary ruler was presented to the Landtag.
Kronstadt was seized by the Germans May 30, and on the same day announcement was made that General von der Goltz had been placed in supreme command of the Finnish Army as well as of the German forces in Finland.
Announcement was made on June 10 that Germany and Russia had reached an agreement concerning the boundaries of Finland, providing that Finland cede to Russia the fortresses of Ino and Raivola under guarantees that they were not to be fortified. Russia ceded to Finland the western part of the Murman Peninsula with an outlet to the Arctic Ocean.
In response to communications from the French and British Legations at Stockholm, the Finnish Government announced that it had no designs on the Mourmansk railway, but would not undertake not to reunite Carelia with Finland, and on June 17 it was announced that Finland would annex Carelia.
RUMANIA
Lord Robert Cecil announced in the British House of Commons on May 28 that diplomatic representatives of the Allies at Jassy had notified Rumania that their Governments considered the Rumanian peace treaty with the Central Powers null and void.