19 MARCH 1921, Page 2

The Kronstadt soldiers and sailors are still in revolt against

the Moscow despots. They demand " a regular Republican Government freely elected by the people." Such a demand is of course abhorrent to the Bolsheviks who are more anti-democratic than the Tears or the Hohenzollern. Trotsky's attacks on Kronstadt failed up to Sunday last. It is reported that mutiny is spreading in the " Red " armies, and that the Don and Kuban Cossacks have again risen. Lenin, in a speech at Moscow last week, admitted that the Bolsheviks were " becoming exhausted from insufficiency of forces " and would welcome the help of any " decent administrator " or " practical man " to save Russia from the incompetent and corrupt bureaucracy. He lamented the disunion in his own faction. " New means of agreement between the working classes and the peasantry must," he said, " be sought." Lenin recently said, in effect, that the stupid peasants must be forced to till the ground for the Bolsheviks, whether they liked it or not. He is now discovering that the passive resistance of the peasant to tyranny is unconquerable. The peasant will not sow for the Bolshevik to reap, and thus the Russian townsfolk are starving.