THE RUSSIAN COLLAPSE, - AND WHY
The Russian Collapse, — and Why Lincoln Steffens, in Everybody's Magazine, Gives Impressions of Revolution; Says Allies Must Shoulder Part of Blame for the Present Situation LINCOLN STEFFENS is...
...If my report shows anything, it shows that the Russian people have not only self-government, literally, but self-control...
...they halted to sing tho revolutionary song together...
...He was on the ground when things were happening...
...He ropcated, but in a softer tone he said: " 'Are not you ashamed to let the leader of the oldest, the least democratic, the most corrupt and plutocratic of the republics, lead the world in the declaration for the idealistic ends of this world war, while you, the leader of the youngest, the newest, the most hopeful of all democracies, you lag...
...Sonn after I got to Petrograd, an Englishman, a high-minded, scholarly Liberal, who was there on a mission for his Government, said he was glad the Americans had come into the war, because he thought we would 'put the war back on the high plane where it was with us English at first.' "That's all the Russians ask, the people, I mean, the mob, the free, armed Russian mob, and that mob is not unreasonable...
...But the Mongols were not shy any longer...
...and then, at a moment I felt—everybody seemed to get the full import of it—the two or three races rushed together, and embraced, and wept...
...Steffens, as usual, has gotten at the fundamentals of the upheaval in the former czar's domains...
...These were shy, abashed, not sure...
...I saw two processions meet on the bank of the Neva...
...When America foremost reporter meets the world's biggest piece of news the result is both interesting and illuminating,—and there are many people in this country looking for the truth about Russia...
...Russia, just at present, is the world's biggest piece of news...
...And in the latest Everybody's Steffens tells why the Russians are not fighting...
...Steffens caught one of the first boats bound east after the czar's crown had toppled into the dust...
...Then if the secret treaties are an illusion, if there is nothing bad in them, put, say, Kerensky, in a position to go home and say so...
...Gutchoff's bedside, where a majority of the Provisional Government and all the Soldiers and Workmen, were trying to persuade the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Miliukoff, to resign or demand of the Allies a clearing up of the matter of the secret treaties...
...A moment, and they recovered their dignity, and marched on their way...
...He contends that as much of the blame for the Russian collapse lies at the doors of the allies...
...they looked a bit astonished at one another, but their step was sure...
...then, moved a bit...
...you stand with the old empires for the old, dead diplomacy...
...And the Russian statesmen suggest a way to deal with it: "Call a conference of the Allies, with the new allies: the United States, New Russia, and China...
...If they are not an illusion, it is harder, but not impossible...
...will listen and, listening, can accept two ideas at once and consider them, talk them over quietly together and act upon them...
...Are not you ashamed, Paul Nicholevitch.' the orator said, pointing to Miliukoff...
...That public opinion may be based on an illusion...
...The fact is that the Russian and German soldiers have been talking man to man for months for miles along the trenches...
...Steffens says: Up to the Allies "ONLY the Allies can make the Russians want to fight, and they can do it only by dealing in the spirit of New Russia with the public opinion of Russia...
...A cry: 'Daloi MiliukolT,' one cry, fired like a shell from the crowd in the Marinsky, before the Council of Empire, screamed down the Moika Canal and burst In the smaller, intenser crowd in front of tho War Minister's palace...
...tho other of Tartars, Mongols and Chinamen, workers who did the dirty work of the city—street-cleaning, sewers, draining...
...Says Allies Must Shoulder Part of Blame for the Present Situation LINCOLN STEFFENS is back from Russia...
...THE manner in which cMss harriers have been broken by the revolt is shown in tho following characteristic Steffens touch...
...He tells about it in the current issue of Everybody's Magazine...
...One was of jolly Russians: men, women, girls and boys, soldiers and workers...
...It sobered the speaker...
...and that, not thousands, but hundreds of thousands of Russians have left the front and gone back home to a million places in Russia and Siberia, and there and all along the road they have spread the opinion that some of the Allies have secret treaties by which each of them is to get an increase of empire...
...This is important because Steffens is America's foremost reporter...
...Necessarily everything Is tense and dramatic in Russia Here is the way Steffens tells it: "Take the supreme moment of that meeting at Mr...
...See that the Russian representatives represent the Russian people and have their full faith, as, for example, Kerensky has it...
...That's what took the fight out of the Russians...
...but he Btopped...
...That's what the Allies have to deal with...
...One speaker, flushed and eloquent, was quoting President Wilson, showing that he was saying for the United States just what the Soldiers and Workmen were saying for Russia: that this war must be for no extension of territories and no compensation or revenge, but only for conditions that would make for permanent peace and a freed world...
...That illusion may have been planted by the Germans, and it probably was, for the Germans, the German people, seem to have the same idea...
...No matter...
...that they are fair...
...The two processions cheered each other...
Vol. 9 • August 1917 • No. 8
