12 JANUARY 1918, Page 2

The Petrograd Anarchists, after deciding last week that the hypocritical

German claims to Courland, Lithuania, and Poland could not be accepted, proposed to transfer the Peace Conference from Brest-Litovsk to Stockholm. The German Chancellor stated in the Reichstag on Friday week that he had rejected this proposal, on which, he said, the Russians were not in a position to insist. Trotsky went to Brest-Litovsk on Monday, ostensibly to try to talk the Germans over. The enemy delegates are negotiating separately with the Ukraine Republic They have asked " Comrade " Joffe, the chief Anarchist delegate, to note that the Allies have made no response to the peace offer of Christmas Day. The enemy laid it down as a condition of a peace "without annexations and with- out indemnities " that the Allies should accept the principle within ten days. The inference, promptly drawn by the organ of the Vienna Foreign Office, ia that the enemy has annulled the fine phrases to which, as the Russians have already seen, he never intended to give effect.