The internal situation in Russia proper remains uncertain, nor have any
definite changes taken place in the mood of the people or in the
Governmental policies of the Bolsheviki. It is charged that the
Bolshevist Government suppressed the full text of the Brest-Litovsk
Treaty. On April 10 the Commissioner of Commerce of the Bolsheviki
announced that under the terms of the peace treaty Russia had suffered
the following losses:
Seven hundred and eighty thousand square kilometers (301,000
square miles) of territory.
Fifty-six million inhabitants, constituting 32 per cent, of the
entire population of the country.
One-third of Russia's total mileage of railways, amounting to
21,530 kilometers, (13,350 miles.)
Seventy-three per cent. of the total iron production.
Eighty-nine per cent. of the total coal production.
Two hundred and sixty-eight sugar refineries, 918 textile
factories, 574 breweries, 133 tobacco factories, 1,685
distilleries, 244 chemical factories, 615 paper mills, 1,073
machine factories.
These territories, which now become German, formerly brought in
annual revenue amounting to 845,238 rubles, and had 1,800
savings banks.
The alarming sweep of the Teutonic invasion, together with the growing
realization of what the Brest-Litovsk agreement really means to Russia,
seemed finally to arouse some spirit of resistance in the Russian
masses. Patriarch Tikhon declared that the Russian Church could not
recognize a peace dismembering the country and subjecting it to a
foreign power. Since the ratification the spokesmen of the Bolshevist
Government have not ceased talking of organizing a large army for a new
war. The prevalent Bolshevist opinion is that the new revolutionary army
should be used, in the words of the semi-official Bolshevist organ
Pravda, "not to strengthen, as the imperialists calculate, this or that
bourgeois front, but to turn the front of the world war into a front of
the workers' and soldiers' revolution."
[Illustration: The United States Congress in wartime, including nearly
all the members of the House, on the steps of the Capitol
(© _Harris & Ewing_)]
[Illustration: An American first aid station in the trenches in France
(© _Committee on Public Information_)]