WAR AND REVOLUTION IN ASIATIC RUSSIA.• Now that British troops
are at Baku, the affairs of the Caucasus have a direct interest for us, and any book that throws light on the situation is welcome. Mr. Philips Price, who was the correspondent
of the Manchester Guardian in Russia from 1914, went to the Caucasus in 1915, and stayed there till the outbreak of the Revolu- tion in March, 1917. He journeyed also through Eastern Armenia,
part of Kurdistan, North-Western Persia, and the little-known country of Lazistan, on the Black Sea east of Trebizond, and distributed the funds subscribed in India for the relief of the Moslem population who had suffered through the war. He sketches very clearly the Russo-Turkish campaign, in which the Russians, after narrowly escaping disaster, destroyed a Turkish army at Sary- kamysh in December, 1914, and later achieved a great feat by taking Erzerum in February, 1916. He also describes with com- mendable fairness the relations between the Armenians and Kurds in Armenia, and the still more difficult problem of the Caucasus, where Armenians, Georgians, and Tartars have conflicting racial and eco- nomic interests, on which the Turks and the Russians have traded for their own purposes. It is a great pity that Mr. Philips Price should prejudice his readers against him by obtruding his own political views, which are those of a Bolshevik and a Pacificist.
An English author who goes out of his way to suggest that " the financial interests of London, Paris, and Berlin " were equally re- sponsible for the war, and for the ruin and waste that he observed in Armenia, is deliberately creating a false impression which the whole educated world knows to be false. The reader will naturally ask whether a writer who can make such an utterly baseless charge against his own country is to be trusted as a recorder of events in Armenia or the Caucasus. Further, Mr. Philips Price admits that he advocated his peculiar views in conversation with Russian soldiers, whom he met in one of the Erzerum forts. " Thinking," he says, " that if it became known that I was spreading revolu- tionary ideas in the army, there might be trouble," he did not pursue the subject very far ; but he had, according to his own account, broken the very first rule—of absolute neutrality in politics—that every newspaper correspondent with a foreign Army is in honour bound to observe. No one can tell how much harm was done by these sophistries about war being " very stupid and wrong," and about the lack of any personal quarrel between the Russian soldier and the Turkish soldier. Propaganda of this kind has been used by the Germans and the Bolsheviks with deadly effect among the simple-minded Russian troops. We cannot help expressing our surprise and regret that the special correspondent of an English paper of high standing should have so far forgotten his duty to his country, his employers, and his profession as to lend himself to this deplorable propaganda, the sole effect of which has been to ruin Russia, to help the enemy, and to prolong the war.
Bolshevism apart, the book is nevertheless worth reading. The author shows that our Gallipoli expedition helped the Russians greatly by diverting the best Turkish divisions westward until the Army of the Caucasus was organized and ready to move. Russia repaid the debt by undertaking the Erzeruin advance in the winter of 1915.16 to divert Turkish troops from the Tigris Valley, where General Townehend was beleaguered in Kut. It was not intended to attack Erzerum itself, according to the author ; but the unexpected success of the army in capturing Kupri Keui and Hassan Kaleh, the natural outworks before the Erzerum forts, induced the Grand Duke Nicholas to let General Eudenitch assault the fortress itself.
Mr. Philips Price entered the city soon after its capture, and his account of the Russian flank march over lofty snow-covered moun- tains in the bitter wintry weather is a just tribute to one of the most astonishing victories in the whole war. The Russian soldier, well led, could do anything ; it is pitiful to think how since those great days he has been befooled and betrayed into the enemy's power.
• War and Revolution is Asiatic Russia. By M. Philips Price. London : Allen and tinsin. Its. ed. net.'
The Russians were assisted by Armenian volunteers, wholn Mr. Philips Price describes as brave but too emotional and careless of discipline. The action of some of the Turkish Armenians in fighting for Russia gave the Turks an excuse, the author suggests, for slaughtering their people who stayed at home. But the Turks would have massacred the Armenians in any case. They would have found a pretext even if all the Armenian youth had adopted Pacificist views. Before the war they had planned the forcible removal of the Armenians to Mesopotamia, so that Armenia might be colonized by Macedonian Moslems. The author attributes the feuds between Armenians and Kurds to economic rather than religious differences. The Kurds, who are still nomadic, move northward from the head-waters of the Tigris and overrun the Armenian farm-lands. There will be no peace in Armenia until a strong Government enforces order on both races, and gives the Kurds an opportunity of acquiring the elements of civilization. In the Caucasus the Armenians, who are numerous and wealthy, have taken a very active part in politics. The author suggests that their feud with the Georgians and the Tartars was artificially stimulated by Russian reactionary intrigues, and that the Government set one nationality against another in order to maintain their holdover them all. But the Revolution, as he admits, did not still this feud, and it is far from certain that even the recent Turkish invasion has taught the peoples of te Caucasus the need for unity of action. However, if the Armenians alone have been able to put aside their party quarrels, they should, with British help, be able to offer a stout resistance to the Turks.
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