Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1918-07-23
RUSSIA MUST BE SAVED

BE Able to Find Out the Way to DO II
TT MAY be accepted as fact now that
the Powers have agreed upon plan
for some form of intervention in Siberia.
Definite statements come from Toxic
that Japan has agreed to the plan pro-
posed by the United States. The details
Of the plan are yet to be made public,
but it is intimated that the immediate
purpose is to secure the base at Vladi-
vostok for the support of the Czecho-
Slovak army, which controls the Siberian
railroad as far west as Irkutsk, on Lake
Baikal
Its larger purposes are to enable the
Russians to solve their own problems and
to prevent the Germans from gaining
control of Siberia. There is expectation
born of hope that German influence can
be kept from affecting any part of
Siberia and that its power west of the
Urals can be weakened. The whole plan
undoubtedly centers around the arrange
ments now making to send an American
economic commission into Siberia by way
of Vladivostok to assist in the material
rehabilitation of the country.
The necessity of saving Russia for the
Russians is imperative. Unless this can
be done, as has been repeatedly pointed
out on this page, any peace that can be
made will be German victory which
will be followed by future wars.
The problem is so big that it will tax
the abilities of the greatest statesmen in
the Allied countries. Germany has been
influential in Russia from the days of
Peter the Great. He invited Prussian
statesmen and Prussian business men to
st. Petersburg to assist him in the task
of making a nation of his empire. Cathe-
rine the Great colonized large tracts of
Russia with Germans. She was the
daughter of a German prince and her
successors married into German princely
families. The great industries of Russia
have been dominated by Germans. 1t
was German influence exerted through
Germans in high office at court which
paralyzed the Russian armies prior to
the revolution that overthrow the Gar.
Since the revolution Germany has been
doing on a larger scale what she had
been doing for more than a century and
half previously.
Yet the difficulties in the way of rescu-
ing Russia from the Germans should
challenge US to the effort. Those diff
culties lie. not only in the hold which
Germany already has on the country but
to greater degree in the political mex
perience of the Russian people and in the
hostility to one another of the many
races which occupy the country.
1t may be necessary for an interna-
tional advisory commission to be formed
to assist the people in untangling their
affairs. The economic commission which
we are planning to send into Siberia will
have before it splendid opportunity to
prove that a commission representing all
the Allied Powers could do something
toward rescuing Russia from the politi-
cal and economic anarchy in which she is
now wallowing. Its standards of con-
duct would in time appeal to the sound
sense of the great mass of the people.
Some Of their leaders in power today
have, as DR.. E. J.'Dillon has said, mo
longer a living faith in the principles
that lie at the root of civilized community
life" Such leadership cannot in the
nature of things last. 1t will collapse by
it's very inexperience and ignorance.
There are already signs that it is totter-
ing.
1t is important that there be ready to
take its place leadership which has
respect for the rights of property and
the rights of the individual, and will not
countenance the abandonment of all the
moral conventions which make it possi-
BILE for the family and the home to exist.
There is perfect agreement on the ends
to be accomplished. What disagreement
there is relates to the means to be used.
No final decision as to the means can be
reached until more is known about the
temper of the people than is now avail
able either in America or in western
Europe.