Germany, having used the " self-determination " of the Ukraine
as a means of dissolving Russia into helpless fragments, has now overturned the Ukraine Government, set up a dictatorship under General Skoropadski as Hetman, and proclaimed martial law. Her pretext is that the late Government, which betrayed the Russian cause at Brest-Litovsk, had failed to supply corn in suffi- cient quantities to the Central Powers, and had been privy to an anti-German conspiracy. Dr. Harold Williams, writing in Tuesday's Daily Chronicle, declares that General Skoropadski and his Cabinet, as Constitutional Democrats, are really friendly to the Allies and anxious to reunite Russia, and that their object is to restore order rather than to help the enemy. We hope that he is right. Meanwhile the Germans are in full occupation not merely of the Ukraine but also of the Crimea, and of territory further east which the wildest Ukrainian never claimed. They intend, it seems, to extort from the peasantry all their stores of grain, and to compel them to till the soil this year for Germany. Such a policy is calculated to make the Ukrainians turn against their German friends, and therefore to detain large German forces in the East. Germany's troubles in Russia are not by any means at an end.
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