TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE RUSSIAN CRISIS.
THE situation in Russia is critical, and it seems only too likely that the country. will be plunged in civil war, if indeed a state of civil war is not already in existence. A duel for the power to rule is being fought between M. Kerensky and. General Korniloff, and no man outside Russia can say at present what the result will be. It is to be noted that so far all our information has come from M. Kerensky, who evidently holds the wires. General Korniloff has issued a manifesto denouncing the principles on which M. Kerensky is still trying to rule, but only fragmentary phrases from what is clearly a violent condemnation have reached this country. Although we know very little of the details of the situation, two or three reflections may be offered with some degree of confidence. The first is that Russia will probably recover her strength ultimately because she must. The prospect before her, unless she recovers, is to become a very easy prey to Germany, who wants nothing better than to get possession of so rich a property. The second reflection is that there seems little chance of Russia recovering quickly enough to give us any decisive military help in the war, although we are far from saying that she is not rendering us appreciable services so long as she holds the Germans in a state of suspense. The only wise policy for-ns is to assume the worst, write off Russian military assistance as a bad debt, and then be grateful for any military windfalls that may happen to come.
According to M. Kerensky's account of the rupture between himself and General Korniloff, the first act came from the latter. General Korniloff, through the agency of M. Lvoff (not Prince Lvoff), summoned M. Kerensky to surrender all power, civil and military, to General Korniloff as Dictator. Kerensky's answer was to dismiss General Korniloff from the Commandership-in-Chief and appoint General Klem- bovsky (the Commander of the Northern Army Group) to be Commander-in-Chief in his place. M. Kerensky certainly displayed no timidity. He denounced General Korniloff as a traitor, and warned him that he would be punished. General Korniloff's reply was even more decided. He began at once to march on Petrograd. Meanwhile M. Kerensky placed Petrograd under military law, and the Provisional Govern- ment, who have apparently ceased actively to exist, handed over their executive powers to him. M. Kerensky is not acting as an absolute Dictator, as he has chosen four of his colleagues to act as a Directorate. In his manifestoes he assumes the support of the Army, of which he has appointed himself to the Chief Command, and he declares that General Korniloff's " futile advance " upon Petrograd has already failed. On the other hand, it seems to us probable that General Korniloff is too experienced a soldier to undertake a merely stupid forlorn hope, and in support of this we must record the resignation of the Military Governor of Petrograd and the refusal of General Klembovaky to become Commander-in- Chief. As we write the attitude of General Alexeieff, a wise and trusted leader, is uncertain. For a time M. Kerensky seems to have played with the idea of allowing General Alexeieff to become Prime Minister, but finally he appears to have decided that the Soviet (the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates) was the only horse to back. If M. Kerensky is entrusting the fortunes of the country to the political keeping of the Soviet, and General Korniloff stands for the purely military, and therefore essentially non-political, plan of saving the country from the enemy, the issue between the two men in this extraordinary duel is at all events clear. We imagine that both men are sincere patriots.
Dr. Charles Sarolea in a remarkably precise prediction pub- lished in Everyman on September 7th stated that civil war must inevitably follow the Moscow Congress. He analysed the tendency of the conflicting principles at Moscow so successfully that we are inclined to pay attention to the further results which he thinks will follow. He believes that the extremists of the Soviet will become more extreme, and that the only possible counter-blow will be found in the action of the Army. The country, he says, is faced with a tragic dilemma, and must choose between the civilian dictatorship of demagogues— which means anarchy, chaos, and disaster—and a ruthless military dictatorship which insist mean civil war. It must not be forgotten that the Army itself is divided, and that there is no chance of its being mobilized as a whole. A considerable proportion of it may act under General Korniloff, and it re- mains to be seen whether M. Kerensky will be able to command
the active support of a correspondingly large proportion. Dr. Sarolea is confident that the bulk of the Cossack regiments will follow General Korniloff, because it is their strong tradition to follow their officers, and moreover; as they hold a hundred and fifty million acres of land by military tenure, they are necessarily interested in the preservation of order. If General Korniloff should have any sort of success, much will depend on his character and the political aims which he is bound to develop as he accumulates power. Hitherto he has professed himself a strong believer in the Revolution, but we take him to be much more of a soldier than a politician, and he will probably adapt his politics to military exigencies, just as Dumouriez did under the Convention in the French Revolution. Dumouriez, it will be remembered, dismissed the Commissaries of the Convention ; but circumstances were much too strong for him, and his action ended in humiliation when he found himself obliged to cross the frontier and give himself up to the Austrians. But though politically there is some analogy between General Korniloff and Dumouriez, there is a much closer analogy—how strange it is that all revolutions have points of strong resemblance !- between General Kinniloff's treatment of the Soldiers' Com- mittees in the field and Cromwell's short and drastic way of dealing with the Levellers. General Koiniloff, when he found himself faced by the pretensions of a counter-authority in the field—soldiers who took it upon themselves to decide in con- clave whether an order should be obeyed or not—felt of this movement that it was time to " trample it out or be trampled out by it on the spot." Readers of Carlyle's Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches will remember the description of the incidents in Corkbush Field :-
" This same Monday when Hammond's Letter arrives in London is the day of the mutinous Rendezvous in Corkbush Field between Hertford and ware; where Cromwell and the General Officers had to front the Levelling Principle in a most dangerous manner, and trample it out or be trampled out by it on the spot. Eleven mutineers are ordered from the ranks ; tried by Court-Martial on the Field ; three of them condemned to be shot—throw dice for their life, and one is shot there and then. The name of him is Arnald ; long memorable among the Levellers."
Although we agree with Dr. Sarolea that the immediate future is extremely gloomy, we think that he has paid too little attention to the good signs which areby no means absent. The Russians have always been a fighting people, and nothing is more certain to stir them to furious self-defence than to see rich towns and provinces disappear piecemeal into the maw of Germany. The path of Russia, however uncer- tain and beset by lions, leads through the jungle into the light of day. We repeat our belief that she will recover because she must. To have internal convulsions proceeding while the enemy knocks at her gates is no doubt a terrible experience, but it is by no means a new one. During the French Revolution the insurrection in La 'Vendee, the revolt at Lyons, and the threats from Bordeaux and many other French cities and provinces were all going, on simultaneously or in quick succession. Yet from the Revolution a state of order and a triumphant Army emerged. Neither the state of order nor the Army was what the authors of the Revolution had foreseen, but nevertheless they emerged.
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