Five Mile Beach weekly journal., 1918-11-29
Walks and Talks
BY julius Chambers, I'm the
Brooklyn Eagle
Years Will be Needed to Restore Russia

No longer ago than yesterday /
talked with an American who has
spent many years in Russia and left
Moscow as lately as October 16-com-
ing by way of Petrograd, Stockholm
and London. His account of the sit
uation in Russia is not calculated to
impress one with hope for the future
of that country. He tells me the whole
country, from the Ural mountains to
the Black sea, is In ferment.
Every small community is q law
unto Itself.
He confirms what the Russian house
painter told me two weeks ago, name
Iy, that the Russian moujik, or farmer
class, is perfectly satisfied with present
conditions.
The entire population is a seething
mass of resentment against former op-
preston! Each community now en-
lows "home rule" Owners of large
plots Of land have been killed or driven
away, and tillers of the soil have di-
vided up the terrain. If the great
house of an estate admitted of division
into several tenements it has been thus
disposed of. If not, 1t has been burned
or torn down and smaller ~habitations
built with the wreckage on the several
subdivisions.
In the larger cities theft and murder
are general diversions. The very poor
classes have nothing to lose and every
thing to gain by each days lawlees-
ness.
The European Russian, / am told,
cares nothing about the fate Of Siberia.
He views with utter indifference the
efforts of the allied Americana ritish-
Japanese-French expedition to cross
Siberia, and by forming a junction
with forces that have entered by the
Thurman coast, to crush Bolshevikism.
My informant regards the situation
of the Allied and American troops at
Archaugel as highly precarious. The
White sea is frozen tight, by this time;
snow is probably six Or eight feet deep,
rendering the railway imperative. I'm
less an ample store of provisions has
been provided the suffering of the men
for food will be extreme.
In the city of Moscow people were
held up on the highways In daylight
and robbed. Clothes were taken from
their backs by the despoilers. To go
upon the streets by night was to risk
assassination, just for the diversion
thereof. Every few days a mob would
form which would range at will
through a section of the city; then an
armed force belonging to another social
organization would appear, fire a few
volleys into the surging crowd and
march away. On more than one &C.
casion the Bolsheviks killed their own
people in this manner; but nobody pro-
tested. 1t was a mere incident, forgot
ten in q few hours. Courts are closed
no organization for the preservation of
order exists.
This is the country the Allies have
undertaken to put upon its feet. It's
people prefer anarchy to social order;
they dislike peace and do not thank
outsiders for bringing it about.
The willingness of the Washington
government to hold any correspond
ence with this German Solf, who abso-
lutely represents nobody, is beyond
comprehension. He is actually start
ing in this country a propaganda OF
mawkish sympathy for the renegades
of the world!
Indications of the morale of the
Prussian troops now homeward bound
are seer in the robberies they are COM
hitting in Wurtemburg and Baden.
They have become SO accustomed to
despoiling helpless Belgian and French
villages that they continue their nefar-
i,us habits among their own country
men. Rather curious that 1 should
have predicted the development out OF
this war ola crop of Hun thieves.
There is no more order in Germany
than in Russia. 1t is the same old
Hunland.
AS long al their s%waggering troopers
could continue to kill Americans OF
Allies, "the gentle-natured people at
home" submitted to every conceivable
privation. They went half clothed
and half fed, but now that "the royal