The people have by their deputies taken charge of the Government. I relinquish all participation in the administration of the State. I likewise release my Austrian ministers from their offices. May the German-Austrian people harmoniously and peacefully adjust themselves to the new conditions. The happiness of my peoples has from the beginning been the object of my warmest wishes. Internal peace alone will be able to heal the wounds which this war has caused. (Signed) Charles. (Countersigned) Lammasch."

On the day following the issue of this somewhat pathetic Proclamation, Prof. Lammasch, the last Austrian Premier in the old sense, resigned, and with his resignation the Austrian Empire formally ceased to exist. Four days later Charles abdicated from the Hungarian throne.

During the last few weeks of the year the development of affairs in the more important of the now entirely independent national States proceeded smoothly. Definite German, CzechoSlovak, Jugo-Slav, and Hungarian States were formed; but the other national territories being akin to neighbouring independent Powers did not themselves become independent States. Thus the Italian districts were annexed by Italy, the Rumanian districts of Hungary attached themselves to Rumania, and in Galicia war broke out between the Polish and Ukrainian sections of the population, considerable areas of that province being debatable territory as between those two nationalities. It was also alleged that great cruelties and pogroms were perpetrated by the Poles against the Galician Jews, particularly in Lemberg.

The Czecho-Slovak Cabinet was completed on November 16. Dr. Kramarzh became Prime Minister. Dr. Benes was Foreign Minister. M. Stanek became Minister of Public Works, and M. Stefanik became Minister of War. Prof. Masaryk became first President of the Czecho-Slovak Republic. Prof. Masaryk and Dr. Kramarzh had long been the leading advocates of Bohemian independence. The Bohemian Prime Minister announced that the Western Powers had agreed that all Bohemia, including the German-speaking districts, should be given to the new Czecho-Slovak Republic.

M. Korosek was the first Premier of the new Jugo-Slav Government, but in December it was announced that a union had taken place between Serbia and the Jugo-Slav State, formed out of the southern provinces of Austria-Hungary. M. Pashich, Serbian Prime Minister, became first Premier of the united State, M. Korosek being Vice-Premier. The well-known JugoSlav propagandist, M. Trumbitch, became Minister for Foreign Affairs.

In Hungary Count Karolyi continued in power till the end of the year, and the disintegration of Hungary at the end of the year had not proceeded so far as in the case of Austria. Indeed, the Hungarian Government seem to have hoped to be able to preserve a large part of the Hungarian territory by

means of bestowing a generous measure of autonomy upon the different nationalities. It was announced in December that the elections for the Hungarian Constituent Assembly would be held in the second week in January.

The position of German-Austria was more unhappy than that of any of the other three greater States. This was due to the fact that Austria Proper had for many years been dependent for a large part of its food supplies upon the resources of the neighbouring provinces of the Dual Empire. German-Austria was not self-supporting. The first action of the Czecho-Slovak Government was to cut off all exports of food from the CzechoSlovak territory to German-Austria, and a similar hostile action was taken by the Jugo-Slav Government. Even the Hungarian Government placed obstacles in the way of sending assistance to Austria. All over the country of the new South German State, therefore, privation and actual starvation were rife. And bad as the conditions were in the small towns, and even in the country districts, the position was much worse in Vienna. The glory of the ancient capital of Germany had departed. Vienna, which a few years earlier had been one of the gayest and most brilliant cities in the world, was now plunged into misery. The magnitude of Vienna and its huge population, which had been the sign and symbol of its historic Imperial position, were now the chief cause of its undoing. For the city was now much too great for the small territory of which it remained the capital. The tragic end which had overtaken the Habsburg Monarchy and the Habsburg system of government in Central Europe, could not have been better typified than in the pitiful condition of Vienna at the end of the year.

CHAPTER III.

THE DISSOLUTION OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE·

REPUBLIC - UKRAINIA
MINOR RUSSIAN

THE MUSCOVITE POLAND FINLAND

STATES-TURKEY-RUMANIA-BULGARIA—

GREECE-SERBIA-MONTENEGRO-ALBANIA.

THE DISSOLUTION OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE.

It is more than possible that the Russian Revolution should be reckoned the most important event in European history since the Reformation. Writers have already likened the Revolution and its consequences to the decay and dissolution of the Roman Empire, and the comparison has much truth in it. As compared with the mighty events of 1917, the French Revolution was but a petty and local affair. France was, after all, only one of the number of States composing Western Europe, and in the end her political convulsions left little or no permanent effects outside her own boundaries. Russia, however, was half Europe. Almost the whole of the great religio-political entity-for it is

an entity-which we call Eastern Europe, had come under the sway of the Tsarism. It is this which gives the Revolution its likeness to the Fall of Rome. It was not an event of merely national dimensions. Half a continent, half the greatest of continents, was involved, and-as also in the case of Romehuge extra-European territories were immediately and directly affected by the downfall.

In order to appreciate rightly the course of events and to comprehend the sudden appearance of a whole group of new States upon the map of Europe, it is necessary to stress this point, that the name Russia was synonymous, not only geographically, but historically and sociologically with "Eastern Europe." Not in size only, but in another and deeper sense, Russia was comparable not to a single country of Western Europe, but to all the countries of Western Europe considered collectively. The events of recent years have made a threefold division of Europe familiar to all, and such is convenient for certain purposes. But the historic, the secular, division of Europe is twofold, not threefold. Since the beginning, since the countries of Europe emerged from the pre-historic period into the light of the historic epoch, there has been an Eastern Europe and a Western Europe. And the dividing line through all history has been neither political nor linguistic, but ecclesiastical. Eastern Europe derived its religion from Byzantium: it was Greek Orthodox. Western Europe received its religion from Rome. It is this age-long ecclesiastical division extending through nearly 1,000 years of Christian history before the Reformation and the Renaissance, which left the twofold division of Europe a fundamental reality, even after the Reformation had caused internecine ecclesiastical divisions within Western Europe, and after the Renaissance had caused other matters largely to displace ecclesiastical affairs in the minds of men. It thus comes about that if we remember the true analogy which exists between Russia and Western Europe as a whole, there would appear to be nothing essentially improbable in the idea that a whole group of nations will be permanently established on the wreck of the Russian Empire.

If we judge by the historic ecclesiastical criterion, we shall see that the Tsardom included all Eastern Europe, except Rumania and the Balkan Peninsula. But when the Tsar's Government collapsed there was no power strong enough to hold together that vast territory, and the component parts sought to shape their political destinies for themselves. The Muscovite had been, however, an imperial and aggressive race, and the Empire established and extended by Muscovite arms had expanded powerfully to the west and had come to include countries which belonged historically and culturally to Western Europe. Such was the position of Poland, and of the Baltic Provinces, and also of Finland. These countries had all been part of Roman Catholic Europe, and they had either remained

Catholic or had become Lutheran. The Russian domination had been only a domination, and had not altered the essential character of the countries. It was this affinity of these territories to Western Europe which gave Berlin and Vienna, particularly the latter, the opportunity to win the support of the upper and middle classes of the countries, and in this sense it was only natural that, after the breakdown of the Russian State, Poland and the other States mentioned should revert to that Central European system from which they had only been separated by violence. The lower classes, however, so far as they were politically conscious, were mainly extreme Socialists, or Bolsheviks, and in this they represented an entirely new factor in the problem. Bolshevism, whether as an ideal or as a reality, had little or nothing in common with any polity or state of society which had ever existed either in Western or in Eastern Europe. It may be said, therefore, that pending a final settlement of the whole war, Poland tended to revert to an association with Austria, the Baltic Provinces (in which, be it remembered, the governing classes were German) tended towards the German Empire, and that Finland, chiefly owing to the inactivity of the Swedish Government, also came under the protection of Berlin.

It was not only in the extreme west that great provinces began to fall away. Russia, European Russia, had not only expanded westwards beyond its true and natural boundaries, and had not only-quite legitimately and laudably-united the great Siberian dominion to its own body, but it had also encroached upon the Orient. the Orient. The Russian arms had united Turkestan and Trans-Caucasia with the Russian Empire. It was, therefore, only natural that these oriental countries should fall away, and a republic of Turkestan was founded in January, 1918, and in Caucasia a number of small States made their appearance. Similarly, the tributary States of Bokhara and Khiva declared their complete independence. The most serious schisms were, however, in the body of Russia Proper, which had come to include Siberia, for the great colony of Siberia was as much a part of Russia as Australia was a part of Englishry. In December, 1917, an Independent Republic of Siberia, with its capital at Tomsk, was proclaimed, the Siberians being unwilling to submit to Petrograd now that the former Central Government had fallen into the hands of the Bolsheviks. Similarly, the important nation of Little Russia (Ukrainia or Ruthenia) declared its independence, and entered into separate negotiations with the Central Powers in January. Finally, also in January, a Cossack Republic of the Don was founded, the Cossacks always having been hostile to the extreme Socialists. Of a somewhat different character was the secession of Bessarabia, which contained a majority of Rumanians. This province declared its independence at the end of December, and in April announced that it desired to be united with Rumania. Owing to these

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developments it came about that the Central Government which was first established in Petrograd, and later in Moscow, came to rule over a comparatively limited area in Central Russia. The Bolshevik Government in Moscow represented only Great Russia, or Muscovy. And hence, in dealing with the course of events during 1918 it will be necessary to consider all these different States separately.

THE MUSCOVITE REPUBLIC.

As explained in the foregoing paragraphs, the dissolution of the Russian Empire had proceeded so far that not only had the essentially foreign border lands broken away from the Russian State, but the Russian nation itself had been rent into pieces, so that the State which continued to call itself Russia and which was still diplomatically known as Russia, was in reality only a part of the Russian nation and to the eye of the historian was immediately seen to be a strange resuscitation of what in former centuries was known as Muscovy. Yet, just as Muscovy was the heart and core of Russia in the seventeenth and earlier centuries, so now it was the central and northern provinces of Russia which held most strongly to an independent life, apart both from the influence and protection of the Central Powers, and from the influence and guidance of the Entente and the United States of America. The border States of the West came immediately under the domination of Germany, and as will be seen later, large parts of Siberia, and subsequently a part of the north of European Russia came to be dependent upon the Entente. But the revived State of Muscovy was entirely independent, and represented a force in the world which was quite different from the influence exercised by either of the great belligerent groups, and was truly neutral in regard to both of them. But if Muscovy, in the territorial sense and in the sense that it was not dominated by foreigners, truly represented the Muscovy of the past, in almost all other respects it was entirely changed. The new Muscovite State was the creation of the extreme type of socialism known as Bolshevism. And Bolshevism was an entirely new development not only in Russia, but in the world; and it presented the sharpest possible contrast to the polity which had existed in Russia before the fall of Tsarism.

Up to the time of the Bolshevik coup d'état in November, 1917, Russia may be said to have continued to exist as a State, because it was not until that event that the Muscovite and Ukrainian sections of the country had definitely fallen apart. And, of course, it was not until the same date that Muscovy had taken on the new and extraordinary character which separated it so strikingly from the Russia of the past. The two men who were primarily responsible for the coup d'état and the consequent formation of the new Bolshevik Republic were