Mar. 12.
Time and again in dealing with affairs Russian we have emphasized the difficulty, if not sheer impossibility, of getting the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth out of the situation. Reports contradicting one another have followed in bewildering fashion, and in no case has this been more marked than as regards Vladivostok. ince the last remnants of White rule under the guise of the Merkuloff Government disappeared, we have been provided with information on the lines of the following:—That the opportunities for trade had never been brighter and on the other hand that all trade was rapidly coming to a standstill; that the newly arrived Commissars were acting on the. principle of festino lento, disturbing as little as possible existing conditions and only attempting to introduce the fundamentals of their regime gradually; and almost in the same message came news of the nationalization of the Russo-Asiatic Bank and an attendant confiscation of the individual funds in its coffers; that Siberia was now safe for the return of the refugees who had fled before the approach of the Reds, and again that no guarantee of personal security would secure their immunity from persecution, if not death. All attempts to sift the truth out of this hotch-potch of fact and opinion are 0 necessity affected by the personal bias of the inquirer, so one is almost tempted to give UP the task of arriving at @ judgment in despair. Yet the position of Vladivostok in relation to Far Eastern affairs is 50 important that we can hardly take the course of ignoring the whole business. Better to accept the risk of contradiction, if not anger and obloquy, and to place before the public what is at least an Informed opinion on the matter, based on close intimacy with The version of the case we would ask consideration for is not at all bright, emphasizing as it does past confiscations and the prospect of others to come. One of the first acts to attract our attention after the appearance of the Commissars was the "'nationalization" of the office of the Russo-Asiatic Bank, incidentally
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.