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by force of arms and against the wishes of the population in last November and December. He even charges the invaders with committing atrocities. The statement of M. Popovitch presents a history of the unaided efforts of his people in the war, and includes documents that the declaration of Corfu, signed by Serb, Croatian, and Slovene delegates, July 20, 1917, to prove the intention to blot out the political and territorial integrity of Montenegro which found expression and confirmation in Dr. Trumbitch's statement before the Peace Conference.

RUMANIA

The Rumanian Government placed in the hands of its representatives abroad, who had repeatedly queried Bucharest in regard to the situation, a report made by M. Vaida-Voëvod, Minister of Transylvania, as to the Bolshevist situation in Transylvania. In this report it was declared that Count Karolyi became the head of the Hungarian Government with the sole idea of preserving the integrity of Hungary by forcing a Bolshevist administration on the non-Magyar parts of the former kingdom, claimed by Rumania and other nations, and then, by bringing about a magnate coup d'état in Budapest, to centralize the whole country under the old form. As the first part of his scheme did not materialize at the appointed time, the impatient Bolsheviki at Budapest, inspired by Bela Kun and Lenine agents, forced him out, particularly when their suspicions in regard to the second part of his scheme had been aroused. M. Vaida-Voëvod writes:

At the very moment he came into power Karolyi founded at Budapest, 1 Mehmed-Ali Street, a Bolshevist propaganda bureau principally supported by the gold of the magnates. Their agents were trained and pamphlets were printed for a campaign not only in Croatia and the territory claimed by the Serbs, but also in Transylvania.

This bureau was in communication with the Russian Bolsheviki, and particularly with the Ruthenian Bolsheviki of Eastern Galicia, who are only a variant of the militant Maximalists of Moscow. Rumanian troops in occupation of MarmorosSigel, Northern Hungary, captured 800 Bolshevist soldiers who had just arrived from Russia with arms and propaganda material.

Some of the propaganda literature thus apprehended showed that it was intended to be sent out to Entente and neutral countries, alleging that Rumanians were committing atrocities against Magyar population of Transylvania, whereas many of the local Magyar officials had actually been retained in power in the territory occupied by the Rumanian authorities. Based on information conveyed in the foreging report, M. Bratiano, the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary of Rumania, issued a communiqué to the foreign press:

In Transylvania, Rumanian troops, wherever they are, are maintaining order and resisting Bolshevism. On the contrary, wherever there are Hungarian troops occupying territory they are assisting to organize Bolshevism, and the administration of all kinds is very bad. Where Rumanian troops are in occupation of territory, where there are Saxons or Hungarians, there is no trouble. The Saxons have agreed formally to accept a Rumanian administration, and they sent a representative delegation to Bucharest, giving in the adhesion of their communities to the Rumanian Crown and State. Until the present moment the Allies did not allow our troops to go to the frontiers of the claimed territories, and the result was that these frontier territories were occupied by Hungarians, who indulged in a Bolshevist propaganda, and massacred Rumanian intellectuals. Now, late in the day, the Paris Conference has agreed that Rumanian troops shall go forward into these disturbed districts, where the Bolsheviki and the Hungarians have been engaging in every form of disorder. That decision will take effect shortly.

On March 24 Jules Maniu, President of the Directorate of Transylvania, made the following statement in the Monitor of Transylvania, the official Rumanian organ:

Our foreign policy will generally be influenced by the gratitude we feel toward the people of the Allies, who gave the Rumanian Nation the chance of expressing its will and of using its forces in order to realize its ideal-all the more so because our relations with these powers have a practical, political basis.

At the same time, our economic condition demands that we should cultivate friendly relations as soon as practicable with the neighboring States. First to be approached should be the Czechoslovaks, between whom and the Rumanians are many characteristics in common. Then

comes the Polish State, which can easily become our close neighbor, and the Serbs, to whom we are more ciosely allied by common sacrifices.

I doubt not that all controversy between us will disappear as soon as we have all accepted the decisions of the Peace Conference in the same spirit of give and take, and that the good relations of the past will soon be re-established.

Notwithstanding the foregoing optimistic views, the Rumanian Minister of War was actually preparing the country to resist an invasion from three quarters, and on April 6, due to the appeal of Rumania made at Paris, "a strong detachment" of French troops landed at Constanza, on the Black Sea, and later was re-embarked on barges lying in the Danube. On paper, Rumania has seventeen divisions, including two of cavalry. Nine of the infantry divisions, however, are only skeleton formations, as the balance had to be disbanded through lack of food and equipment. This leaves six divisions of about 9,000 men each, besides the cavalry. Two-thirds of the field artillery is useless for lack of horses and harness. The heavy artillery is insufficient and has no tractors. No great or rapid movement of troops could be undertaken on account of the bad condition of the railways. Nevertheless, the following approaches were systematically put in a position of defense:

1. In the east, on the Dniester, and in the north, in Bukowina. The Bolsheviki are reported to have collected ten infantry divisions near Lemberg, and considerable forces (number not estimated) around Odessa, which was evacuated by the French on April 5. A double attack on this front is expected at the end of April.

2. In the west, where the Hungarians have from six to eight divisions on the edge of the occupied territory in Transylvania.

3. In the south, on the Danube and in the Dobrudja by the Bulgarians. The Bulgarians have maintained their stock of arms and ammunition. On demobilization the troops were allowed to take their rifles and cartridges with them, and an army could be mobilized again in a very short time.

In the light of the foregoing the Rumanian Government on April 2 sent an urgent request to the Peace Conference to order the disarming of the Hungarians and Bulgarians and to send food

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Damad Ferid Pasha, who on March 7 became Grand Vizier and Foreign Secretary, before the end of the month ordered the new reform Minister of War, Ahmed Abouk Pasha, and the Minister of Justice, Ismail Ildke Bey, to clear Constantinople of all seditious persons, both active and potential. A special courtmartial was established before which the interallied mission was invited to lay the evidence its agents had been collecting. Moreover, a house-to-house search was made, based on the foregoing evidence. Several Ministers of former Cabinets fearing arrest made their escape, including Djavid Bey, whose manipulations of the Turkish Treasury were described in April CURRENT HISTORY. According to a dispatch from Constantinople, dated April 12, Kemal Bey, former Turkish Minister of Food and Governor of Diarbekr, had been convicted and publicly hanged in Bayazid Square, Stamboul, having been found guilty in connection with the Armenian deportations and

massacres.

The attempt to seize the principal agents of a committee of Turkish officers of the reserve, a subsidiary organization of the Committee of Union and Progress, numbering 13,000 members, met with only moderate success. Many of them had already departed for the interior, where, disguised as hodjas, they were preaching a form of Bolshevism based on the precepts of the Koran-the right of the Moslem to prevail by force over all other communicants being merely substituted for the right of the militant proletariat to dominate all other classes.

Documentary evidence of this nature was found in the clubs and houses identified with the officers of the reserve. The Turkish and interallied police also reaped a rich harvest of bombs and weapons from the same places. The signal for their distribution was to have been the signing of the treaty of peace at Paris; the signal for the uprising, the published decision as to the future Government of Turkey.

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Aside from the Bolshevism preached by the false hodjas there is the purely industrial sort, which was making itself felt among the esnaf, or labor unions, notably in the chapels known as the hammals (porters' guild) and the mahonnauis, (lighter owners' guild.) sooner did the Allies begin to feed Turkey than these esnaf, whose socialistic union dates from 1896, when they organized against the Armenian porters and lighter owners by reason of their calling, established themselves as middlemen, through whom the goods must pass as distributing agents. The food once in their possession, their license to receive it having been given by Djavid Bey, they sold it to the highest bidders, or paid their political debts with it. All this was stopped, however, by the appointment of a British adviser to the Department of Food Control.

These and several other subjects formed the matter of a statement issued to the foreign press by Damad Ferid Pasha. He said he could have no foreign program until the fate of Turkey had been settled by the Peace Conference, although the "claims" the Government were prepared to make had already been decided upon. He said:

It seems to me impossible that this whole nation should be held responsible for what has been done by a young subLieutenant and a band of thieves. In a family there may be one who is responsible for murder, but the whole family are not condemned for his crime, though it is all the same very unpleasant for the family.

For this reason I depend on the wellknown ideas of justice of England and France to help this unfortunate family. At present we cannot put forward our case before the Peace Conference, but I feel sure that if Germany is to be allowed to send delegates to the Peace Conference we shall also be allowed to do so.

Then there is the question of public safety. On the other side of those mountains there are brigands continually at work, massacring whole families! I have already given orders to increase the number of men in the gendarmerie to 30,000, and instead of paying them $10 a month we intend to pay them $25, together with food and clothing. In this way I hope soon to increase the feeling of public security.

We must have money in order to give the demobilized soldiers a few months' pay to enable them to live quietly until things become normal. Meanwhile, we must work and quickly show the Allies that we are sincere. For ten years I have fought this awful committee (the Committee of Union and Progress) and intend to continue to do so. Unfortunately the last three months have been practically wasted. Matters have now become urgent. But I depend on the good-will and sense of justice of France and England, and I hope I shall not be disappointed.

The memorandum of the Turkish 66 claims " mentioned by Damad Ferid Pasha presupposes that Constantinople will remain the capital of the Turkish Empire, while the argument is principally based upon Clause XII. of President Wilson's fourteen points.

The memorandum, for the purpose of argument, divides the empire into two big sectors: (1) The Turkish provinces in Europe and Asia; (2) the Arab provinces. "However, as among the Turkish provinces certain eastern vilayets, known in Europe as Armenian provinces, exist, it is necessary to make sub-divisions."

Before making any attempt to claim the territory on the ground of self-determination, the memorandum has a word to say about the massacres, "which are profoundly to be regretted whoever may have been the perpetrators." The Turkish Government has therefore requested the neutral powers of Spain, Switzerland, Denmark, Holland, and Sweden to form an international commission to decide on the responsibility for these "regrettable events." The memorandum then proceeds to make the charges of Armenian initiative "it is a proved fact that Armenian bands massacred a million Mussulmans, partly before the deportations began and especially after the invasion of the eastern provinces by the Czar's army, and the horrible work of these

bands still continues "—and it offers this alternative solution:

The maintenance of Ottoman sovereignty in the “Armenian provinces, socalled," which shall presuppose the repatriation of both Mussulmans and Armenians or the extension of the Republic of Armenia formed in the Caucasus in such a manner as to allow the repatriation of all Armenian refugees at present there, as well as those deported from the Sanjak or Zor. Moreover, all Musselmans of the old as well as the new territories of the republic are to be removed and settled in the provinces remaining under Ottoman sovereignty. The Turkish Government favors the alternative proposal.

In regard to the Arab provinces, the memorandum points out the political, religious, social, and economic ties which have united them with the empire for centuries, and the sincere loyalty generally of the Arabs to the imperial throne. Taking all this into consideration, it suggests giving them broad administrative autonomy. Reference is made to the fact that a century ago the Arabs of the Yemen placed themselves under the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire in order to be rid of intertribal wars, and declares that during the great war, although "cut off from Turkey, they retained their fidelity and attachment to the Caliphate."

The memorandum makes no other reference to the secession of the kingdom of Hedjaz, which has full standing at the Peace Conference at Paris, being represented by Prince Feisal, the third son of the Shereef of Mecca, by whose efforts the Arab kingdom was established.

THE VATICAN

It was reported, March 10, that the Pope at a Consistory on that day delivered an allocution dealing with the question of the Catholic Church in the East, and particularly with the future of the Holy Places. His Holiness instanced the steps taken by the Holy See in favor of the Armenians, the Syrians, and the Christians of the Lebanon, and the direct appeals made to the Ottoman Government or to those powers whose interven

tion at Constantinople promised the best results. Part of the text of the allocution was telegraphed abroad, but an important passage was omitted, for after his Holiness had said, "It would be for us and for all Christians a bitter grief if unbelievers in Palestine were put in a superior or more privileged position, still more so if the august monuments of the Christian religion were assigned to those who were not Christians," came a passage not telegraphed abroad by The Associated Press, which was:

We know, furthermore, that nonCatholic foreigners endowed with ample means are taking advantage of the unspeakable misery and ruin produced by the war to disseminate their own doctrines. It is unbearable that so many souls, losing the Catholic faith, should go to perdition there in the very place where our Lord Jesus Christ Won for them eternal salvation.

The statement of the Tribuna of Rome that "the Pope aspired to take part in the Peace Conference, and that it was not from lack of will on his part that he has not done so," published early in March, later on brought out a communiqué from the Vatican, which reads as follows:

We do not hesitate to affirm that this is absolutely false. After the first few months of the war the Vatican considered what action it might be able to take when the powers should come to treat for peace. The line of conduct determined upon after mature reflection was as follows:

In case of peace by agreement the Pope would have gladly intervened, if he had been invited, in the hope of contributing toward the reconciliation of the opposing parties. On the other hand, in case of the absolute victory of one side and the consequent imposition of peace by the victors upon the vanquished, as such a peace would inevitably leave a legacy of hate with the latter, the Pope did not wish to join in inflicting humiliation.

These decisions, which we guarantee to be strictly accurate, date, as we have said, from the early days of the war, when, that is to say, the probabilities pointed to an absolute victory for the Central Empires. The Pope, therefore, shrank from taking part in the eventual humiliation of the Entente nations.

The Holy See certainly complained of Clause XV. of the Treaty of London, because in the exclusion, which had reference to it alone, it recognized a hostile

disposition. As to the intentions of the clause, as may be deducted from what we have said, they were of no material value. As to questions of fact, we may add that as the Paris Conference never had any intention of admitting to its deliberations those powers which had taken no part in the war, it has never considered or discussed in any way the prospect of possible intervention of the Holy See.

The clause in the Treaty of London, April 26, 1915, complained of by the communiqué reads:

XV.-France, Great Britain, and Russia undertake to support Italy in so far as she does not permit the representatives of the Holy See to take diplomatic action with regard to the conclusion of

peace and the regulation of questions

connected with the war.

Germany and the Bolshevist Peril

A

Bavaria's Soviet Republic Typifies the Revolu-
tionary Trend Throughout the Fallen Empire

[PERIOD ENDED APRIL 15, 1919]

N interval of waiting for the Allies' peace treaty followed the suppression of the second Spartacan revolt in Germany. For a brief time the leaders of parties were content to throw out political smoke screens to cover their real purposes. This period was marked by the Scheidemann-Ludendorff wrangle, growing out of the Chancellor's denunciation of General Ludendorff as a hasardeur, meaning a plunger, adventurer, or reckless gambler. Both Ludendorff and Hindenburg protested and threatened, but the episode ended in the sarcastic explanation by a section of the German press that the sting of the reproach apparently lay in the use of a French word to characterize the Quartermaster General "after four years of war upon foreign words waged so enthusiastically by the super-Germans."

More serious events, however, soon came crowding. The Russian leaven of Bolshevism was at work in all the larger cities, and at Munich, where the assassination of Kurt Eisner had caused a revolution, a full-fledged Soviet Government of Bavaria was proclaimed on April 7. Throughout the story of the month's dangerous unrest the doings of the Reds in Bavaria run as a recurrent leitmotif amid the strikes and suppressed revolts in other parts of Germany. There were still some allied critics who regarded Spartacism as a bugaboo displayed by the Junker element to frighten the Peace

Conference, but the sum total of the month's developments indicated that Germany was in real danger of the chaos that had ruined Russia.

FUNDS SENT BY LENINE

The German press in March discussed at length the revelations of the wholesale use of Russian Bolshevist funds for promoting the German revolution. While Hugo Haase and Emil Barth, prominent Independent leaders and formerly members of the original Council of People's Commissioners, asserted that Joffe, the Russian Bolshevist Ambassador, had merely furnished them with material for Reichstag speeches, Dr. Oskar Cohn, Under Secretary of State in the Department of Justice and formerly counselor for the Russian Embassy in Berlin, frankly admitted and defended accepting Bolshevist money. In part, Dr.

Cohn's statement read:

Does it then require detailed explanations and justifications when I say that I gladly accepted the moneys placed at my disposition for promoting the German revolution by the Russian comrades through Comrade Joffe? Indeed, revolutions swallow up only a small fraction of what a single day of the world war costnot counting human lives-but still they require substantial sums, and these sums must be raised by the International Social Democracy, which wants to bring about a Socialist order of society through revolution.

Comrade Joffe gave me the money on the night of Nov. 5, 1918. This had

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