Mar. 17.
Kxowixe that the Supreme Council and League of Nations are in a quandary over Bolshevism, it is not surprising that local events do not help us towards clear thinking on the subject but rather increase the general perplexity. A few weeks back people who had arrived from Siberia were telling us that Bolshevism had moderated itself, and in an article of singular brilliance which we publish today, Mr. Rodney Gilbert offers some considerations which may be taken as supporting that view. The Supreme Council is presumably equally impressed, believing that out of the gory welter into which it plunged at birth, Bolshevism is emerging with the forces of evolution strongly at work upon it, that it approaches a stage when it may be described as almost sane goverttment. Well and good, nobody need hope for anything more than comparative sanity in government, and given that, the rest of the world will be only too eager to resume relations with Russia. But while the people who try to guide the destinies of the world are trending towards this view, we have the fact that refugees are pouring into Shanghai from Vladivostok. They are a good class of people, in fact the bourgeois who used to be the pet aversion of the Bolsheviks. They come in the first place because they know that the interregnum of the Zemstvos at Vladivostok is nearing an end and that very soon the port will be red. Furthermore rumours are already in circulation here that a reign of something akin to Bolshevism has started, that searches are being instituted, to be followed most probably by seimres of wealth. Whatever may be the truth of these reports, it is evident that the Siberian bourgeoisie do not accept for gospel the reports of Bolshevik moderation.
Of course, they are just as liable be mistaken as the optimists of Europe. They have had a bad time-in the past and are not. prepared ito risk any more than is absolutely necessary in the uncertain present and still more uncertain future. So we cannot offset their views and fears against those of the Supreme Council who are making ready to send a commission -of inquiry to Russia to undertake an investigation upon
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.