Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1920-07-13

LEDGER tnaJ are primarily Clear, or
extraordinary scope and unfai ailingly con :
sistent with the purely American point
of view.
| 1t is altogether unlikely that any Of
the glorious and pitiful sacrifices con-
templated by the Polish people can stop
the Russian advance short of the boun-
daries fixed for the new Polish state at
the Paris conference. The Russians are
driving straight for East Prussia. which
happens to be the last brooding place
of q demented pap -Germanism. The
Germans have everything TO gain and
little to lose by a union with the Slav
soviets against the world
Who can measure the irony of events
after remembering that the Moscow
government made repeated offers of
peace to the new Polish Government
before the onslaught that has carried
Bolshevist armies far forward on a
road which leads straight to the heart
of Continental Europe? The soviet
regime in Russia was tottering and dis
credited. But the aggression Of the
Polish rulers, who drove far into Rus
sian territory to reclaim soil that was
Polish almost two hundred years ago,
and the advance Of the japanese in ST.
IBERIA revitalized the Lenine govern
ment and gave it the cause and the cry
without which il surely would have
vanished before nov.
Upon the ground Of a common pa
triotism almost all Russians forgot their
differences. The Bolshevists are a small
minority in the empire. Virtually all
of Russia is behind the advance on
! Poland. Yet the world is being led to
believe that it is witnessing a Bolshevist
victory. tndeserved prestige for the
fanatical clique at Moscow is the chief
result of the i'll advised Polish advance.
As the Russians have moved forward
the obduracy of the German conferees
at Spa has increased. Their unwilling
ness TO pay to the Allies such war debts
as are justified by considerations of
common honor and simple decency has
become more apparent every day. In
qucstionably there are groups in Ger
many quite ready to take the fullest
possible advantage of the fanaticsm
which at Moscow springs not from
cnmity for any one nation, but from a
neurotic hatred Of all the accepted codes
OF modern civilization.
Pan Germans have never ceased to
dream OF German science, German
minds and the German military spirit
as leading influences amid the measure
| less resources of the Russian empire.
| Oddly enough the policy of some of the
allied governments since the end of the
war has tended steadily to drive the
Germans aud the Russians together in
an outlawed community great enough to
leave perpetual shadow and a perpet-
ual menace over the whole of Europe.
Neither France nor England has the
ability to organize and maintain new
armies for a long campaign. To believe
otherwise is TO entertain an extremely
perilous delusion. Formal parleys, con
cessions and diplomatic maneuvering
may be necessary to stop the Russian
march westward. The allied statesmen
| at Spa may be driven to make terms
with government which until now
they have treated with withering dis e
dain. And that is not by any means
the worst of the present situation.
Unless, by some miracle, the Russians
collapse and retire, Lenine and his
group will have attained a degree OF
prestige which they could not have
gained by generation of successful ad
ministration. Their tyrannies, their
treachery, their terrorism, their en-
shaved labor, their denial of all rules OF
personal liberty will be forgotten, fol
the time at least, by the Russian people
! They viii crown themselves publicly Al