New-York tribune., 1918-08-23
The Brest-Litovsk Incubus

Brest-Litovsk treaty? That treaty barred
the soul Of German diplomacy as no
other written document had ever done.
1t confirmed every suspicion that the
rest of the world had ever harbored of
German faithlessness, avarice and ra-
pacty
Won Kuhlmann went to Brest-Litovsk
processing adherence to the principle of
mo indemnities and no annexations"
Before he finished he had annexed all of
the Cars former western provinces
and assessed monstrous indemnity on
what was left of Russia
Has this piece of highway robbery
paid? Even Germans are beginning to
see that it hasn't. The German govern
ment has been trying to impress various
majority Socialist leaders for service as
Ambassador to Russia Won Mirbach
went to Moscow and was assassinated.
Helferich took his place, but came home
after looking the situation over Schei-
demann doesn't want to go. He fears
the fate of Won Mirbach He knows that
Russia is no place nowadays for Ger
man to show himself in And what about
that marvellous triumph of diplomacy
which was to create a German "Mittel-
asien" as we'll as a German "Mittel-
europa" and open a highroad from Ber-
lin to Bokhara?
Herr DR.. Adolf Solf, the German Sec
retary of State for the Colonies, is now
telling the world that the Brest-Litovsk
treaty has been painfully misunderstood.
Germany, he says, has not undertaken
to make dependencies of the 'liberated"
border Russian states. It will not "mis-
use the protection which has been asked
for and has been granted, because forci-
Bile annexation would bar the way now
open to oppressed peoples-the road to
freedom, order and mutual tolerance"
Hence, of course, the scramble to fill
the thrones of these new independent"
states with German princes and grand
dukes, who will see to it that the free
dom to which their peoples aspire is the
true German brand of freedom.
Herr DR.. Solf, whose voice trickles
honey, also says:
Between the first bursting Of the bonds
and full capabilty of self determination
there lies a natural transition period,
Until the regulative forces should CO.
operate in the various countries Germany
felt called upon to protect these COM
munlties in their own as we'll as in the
general interest, as, indeed, she has been
called upon to do by both national ma
Jorities and minorities.
Germany, it therefore appears. is not
laying a basis in Russia for European
and Asian empire, but is magnanimously
discharging an unselfsh duty to civiliza-
tion.
But here comes Herr Maximilian Har-
den with different tale. The Brest-
Litovsk treaties, he says, "are crime.
the unredeemable sin Of Austro-G German
diplomacy" The trainers of the pacts
with Russia Exhibited no trace of seri-
Gus political morality" He continues:
No lapse Of years can redeem the sin
Of Count Czernin and Of Herr Won Kuhl-
mann. The fruit of their word
Jugglery, the outcome of their despicabe
little game, now with promise of free
democracy and now with threat of brute
force, is that without the slightest need
almost everywhere from Koa to the
lower Danube enemies are arrayed
against US. and that at every Socialist
meeting in Western lands warnings are
loud against a people whose inmost as
piration has been laid bare by the trca-
ties OF Brest and Bucharest.
Which view will the German public
accept? The one that German applica-
ton of the treaties has been fraud or
the one that it has been a crime? It
makes little difference. The Russian and
Rumanian compacts will remain a mill
stone about the neck of a government
which could not see that wholesale rob-
berry would have to be followed by whole