Part 14

On Jan. 5, 1918, the Institute of Local Soviets of National Economy was created, "for the purpose of organizing and regulating the economic life of each industrial section in accordance with the national and local interests." Affiliated with the local Soviets of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates, they are subject to the authority of the Supreme Council of National Economy. They are made up of representatives from trade unions, factory committees, workmen's co-operatives, land committees, and the technical personnel of industrial and commercial establishments. The inner organization of these bodies is elaborate. There are sections, divisions, (of organization, supply and distribution, labor, and statistics,) and business offices.

Here are some of the functions of these Soviets. They must:

1. Manage the private enterprises confiscated by the State and given over to the workmen, such as, for instance, a number of factories in the Ural mining district.

2. Determine the amount of fuel, raw materials, machinery, means of transportation, labor, &c., needed by the given industrial section, and the amount available in it.

3. Provide for the economic needs of the section.

4. Distribute the orders for goods among the individual enterprises and work out the basis for the distribution of labor, raw material, machinery, &c.

5. Regulate transportation in the section.

6. See to it that all the productive forces should be fully utilized both in industry and agriculture.

7. Improve the sanitary conditions of labor.

LAND COMMITTEES

The activity of the Soviets of National Economy is restricted to the field of industry. Their counterpart in agriculture are the so-called land committees.

The decree relating to agrarian socialization, voted by the Bolsheviki at 2 A. M., Nov. 8, 1917, recommends the use of a certain _nakaz_, (mandate,) based on 242 resolutions passed by village communities, as a guide in putting the land reform into practice. Article 8 of this _nakaz_, which is a paraphrase of the agrarian program of the Social Revolutionists, reads thus: "All the land, upon confiscation, forms a national agrarian fund. The distribution of the land among the toilers is taken care of by local and central self-governing bodies. * * * The land is periodically redistributed, with the growth of population and the rise of the productivity of agricultural labor."

For the purpose of putting this program into operation and regulating the economic life of the village generally there have been instituted land committees, (decree of Nov. 16,) one for each volost, (rural district including several villages.) They are to be elected by the population of the district and exist as separate institutions, or function as an organ of the volost zemstvo, wherever this is found. The duties of a land committee are many and complex. It takes inventory of all the land in the district and allots to each village its share of plow land, meadows, and pastures, seeing to it that the land should be equitably distributed among the individual toilers and correctly tilled. It grants lease of lands and waters, not subject to distribution, receives the rent and turns it over to the national fund. It regulates the supply and demand of agricultural labor, takes charge of the forests, fixes prices of timber, receives and fills orders for fuel from the State, and takes the necessary measures to preserve the large, scientifically conducted agricultural establishments.

The delegates of a number of volost land committees, together with representatives of the local zemstvo and the Soviet of Workmen's and Soldier's Delegates, form a county committee. The latter, in its turn, sends a delegate to the Provincial Land Committee. The Main Land Committee, which heads the whole system, is an independent institution on a par with the central State organizations. It is a large group of people, consisting of the Commissariat of Agriculture, together with representatives from the following bodies: The Commissariats of Finance, Justice, and Internal Affairs, the provincial Land Committees, the All-Russian Soviet of Peasants' Deputies, the All-Russian Soviet of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates, and the political parties.

NO MORE LANDLORDS

The Bolsheviki have been careful to extend the abolition of private land ownership to city real estate. By a special decree they abrogated the property rights in city land and in those of the city buildings whose value, together with that of the ground they occupy, exceeds a certain minimum, fixed in each municipality by the local authorities, or which are regularly let for rent, although their value does not exceed the minimum. The land and the buildings are declared public property. The dispossessed owners retain the right to use the apartment they occupy in their former property, provided the apartment is worth no more than 800 rubles of rent per annum. In case the value of the apartment exceeds this maximum the former owner pays the difference to the local Soviet of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates. All the rent which formerly went to the landlord is now paid to that institution or to the Municipal Council. Not more than one-third of the sum thus collected is to be used to meet the various needs of the community; 10 per cent. of it goes to the national housing fund; the rest forms the local housing fund for erecting new buildings, laying out streets, and making other improvements.

COMPULSORY INSURANCE

Municipal socialization of land values, while manifestly intended to benefit the poorer classes, directly affects all the elements of the city population. Other measures enacted by the Bolsheviki are restricted to the proletariat, and properly belong to the field of specific labor legislation. Thus, a law has been passed limiting the working day in both industrial and commercial establishments to eight hours, and further regulating the work of women and children. Furthermore, a minimum wage of the hired workers has been fixed in each section of the country. But by far the most radical and characteristic innovations launched by the Bolshevist Government in this line of legislation are those relating to compulsory insurance of workmen.

On Dec. 29 there was created the Institute of Insurance Soviets, with an executive organ in the form of a Chamber of Insurance. It is the intention of the Government to introduce compulsory insurance for laborers against sickness, unemployment, invalidism, and accidents. The regulations published so far relate only to the first two forms of insurance. The respective decrees rule that throughout the territory of the Russian Republic all hired workers, without distinction of sex, age, religion, nationality, race, and allegiance, are to be insured against sickness and unemployment, irrespective of the character and duration of their work. Salaried employes and members of liberal professions are not subject to this regulation.

At the moment the workman is hired by the employer he automatically becomes a member of two fraternities. In the event of his illness, one furnishes him free medical aid and a weekly allowance equal to his wages; the other assures him the equivalent of his wages if he loses his employment and becomes an unemployed workman. The latter term the law defines as "any able-bodied person depending for subsistence chiefly upon the wages of his (or her) labor, who is unable to find work at the normal rate of remuneration fixed by the proper trade union, and who is registered in a local labor exchange or trade union." The workmen contribute no dues to the fraternities. The income of the latter consists mainly of the payments made by the employers. The owner of an establishment using hired labor must contribute each week to the health insurance fraternity 10 per cent. of the sum he pays out as wages, and at least 3 per cent. of the same sum to the unemployment insurance fraternity. The administrative machinery of this novel form of insurance is worked out with much detail.

It is natural to ask how the various institutions described above are working, if they are functioning at all. It is clear that the smooth working of a great number of cumbersome and wholly novel administrative agencies in a body politic torn by an unprecedented social upheaval amid the horrors of a twofold war would be little short of a miracle. Moreover, it appears that the Bolsheviki have already grown disappointed in some of their political dogmas, notably in the unrestrained and ubiquitous application of the elective principle. Nevertheless, the query, in its entirety, can hardly be adequately answered at present. The time is not far off, however, when it will be possible to say whether the measures decreed in the name of the dictatorial will of the Russian proletariat have taken root or--and this alternative is more probable--whether they have remained merely codified day-dreams.

Lithuania's Efforts Toward Autonomy

By A. M. Martus

In the press of the United States on May 4, 1918, there appeared a notice that President Wilson had given audience to the Lithuanian delegation, recognizing the Lithuanians as a distinctively separate race having rights of self-determination.

At the time of the upheavals in Russia, during the Russo-Japanese war in 1905, Lithuanians, irrespective of political affiliations, held a convention in their capital, Vilna, over 2,000 delegates participating, where they unanimously asserted their right of self-government; also expressing a strong desire to form one political body with their half-brothers, the Letts.

Again in October, 1917, a convention was held in Vilna with about 250 delegates from those parts of Lithuania occupied by German forces, to press their claim of independence for Lithuania. In January, 1918, representative Lithuanians assembled in the same city proclaimed independent Lithuania. Another convention of Lithuanian representatives from Russia and from Lithuanian communities in the United States, England, and Argentina, held in the same month in Stockholm, Sweden, approved the act of their countrymen under German domination. On March 13 and 14 American Lithuanians held a convention in New York City, giving their unanimous approval to the proclaiming of an Independent Lithuanian Republic; here a unanimous resolution was passed protesting against any Polish aspirations or claims to Lithuania, and demanding the inclusion of the Lithuanian part of East Prussia, with the old Lithuanian city of Karaliauchus (Königsberg,) in the Lithuanian Republic.

Lithuanians claim those parts of the neighboring provinces where their language is spoken and where the inhabitants consider themselves Lithuanians. They claim the eastern part of East Prussia--about 13,500 square miles, with 700,000 or 800,000 inhabitants--and parts of the provinces of Minsk and Vitebsk; thus the Lithuanian-Lettish Republic would stretch over 131,000 square miles and have a population of over 11,500,000, inhabiting five centres--Karaliauchus, (Königsberg,) Klaipeda, (Memel,) Libau, Windau, and Riga.

The country is very rich for agriculture, though it contains much undeveloped land, with many rivers, lakes, and large forests. Along the River Nieman in Druskeniki, Government of Goodns, and in Birchtany, Government of Vilna, there are salt springs of high healing qualities, but on account of a corrupt Russian Government they remain undeveloped and unexploited. The seabeach around Palanga, a little distance above Germany's border on the Baltic, could be turned into another Atlantic City, according to the opinion of experts, but the place remains neglected. Lithuania's soil is very rich in aluminium and in material for manufacturing glass. During my last visit to Lithuania, in 1914, the discovery of radium was reported in the vicinity of the mineral springs at Birchtany, but the war came on very soon and nothing further was heard of it.

BRITISH LEADERS ON LAND AND SEA

In March, 1918, Lithuanians demanded that Germany recognize their Provisional Government. The Tevyne of New York, official organ of the Lithuanian Alliance of America, received the following from its correspondent in Russia, relayed from Yokohama, March 26:

In Lithuania there has been formed a Provisional Government consisting of the following: A. Smetona, Premier; P. Dovydailis, Minister of Education; J. Shaulys, Minister of Foreign Affairs; M. Smilgevichus, Minister of Finances; M. Birzhishka, Minister of Justice; J. Vileishis, Minister of Public Works; D. Malinauskas, Minister of Public Safety. Dr. J. Shlupas, well known among American Lithuanians, has been appointed Envoy Plenipotentiary to the United States; J. Aukshtuolis, President of the Lithuanian Committee in Stockholm, is made Ambassador to the Scandinavian countries; M. Ychas, member of the last Russian Duma, Ambassador to England and France; J. Gabrys, manager of the Lithuanian Information Bureau in Switzerland, Ambassador to the Central Powers. A national army is being organized. Lithuania's absolute neutrality was proclaimed. Drafted a political and economic treaty with Sweden.

Lithuanians fought in the Russian Army against the Germans, and now large numbers of them are joining the military and naval forces of the United States to fight the common foe; some are already in the English Army. Lithuania has suffered not for her own faults, but because she was situated between two belligerents. In the Government of Suvalki the German and Russian Armies chased each other nine times backward and forward; one may imagine how much is left there. Nothing but excavations, trenches, heaps of ruins, crumbling chimneys indicate where previously were large and prosperous villages. The world is yet to hear more about German requisitions, German devastations, and German rapine in Lithuania. Not only forests were denuded, but even fruit trees on the farms were cut down and shipped to Germany. The remaining inhabitants are forced to raise crops for the invaders, and for their various products they must accept, under penalty, specially printed money for local use--money that Germans themselves would not accept.

Notwithstanding reports to the contrary, the Lithuanians were with the Allies all the time, and will stand by them to the end. They have faith that the Allies, when the proper time comes, will recognize their just claims.

Germany to Impose "War Burdens" on Lithuania

Emperor William on May 12, 1918, issued the following proclamation regarding Lithuania:

We, Wilhelm, by God's grace German Emperor, King of Prussia, &c., hereby make known that, whereas the Lithuanian Landsrat, as the recognized representative of the Lithuanian people, on Dec. 12 announced the restoration of Lithuania as an independent State allied to the German Empire by an eternal, steadfast alliance, and by conventions chiefly regarding military matters, traffic, customs, and coinage, and solicited the help of the German Empire; and,

Whereas, further, Previous political connections in Lithuania are dissolved, we command our Imperial Chancellor to declare Lithuania on the basis of the aforementioned declarations of the Lithuanian Landsrat, in the name of the German Empire, as a free and independent State, and we are prepared to accord the Lithuanian State the solicited help and assistance in its restoration.

We assume that the conventions to be concluded will take the interests of the German Empire into account equally with those of Lithuania, and that Lithuania will participate in the war burdens of Germany, which secured her liberation.

The Lithuanian National Council, with headquarters at Washington, replied to the foregoing proclamation on May 14 as follows:

The assumption that Lithuania "will participate in the war burdens of Germany" means a contribution of three things: Money, munitions, and men. The first we have not, as Germany has already impoverished us; the second, we have no means of supplying, because we lack the first. Therefore, Germany can have reference only to men. Men from a self-declared democracy to fight in the ranks of autocracy? Unthinkable. Lithuania would not consent. Are her citizens to be dragooned into the ranks of the Kaiser? This would be an abridgment of the sovereignty which Germany has already recognized, for Chancellor von Hertling's reply stated, "We hereby recognize Lithuania as free and independent."

Germany knows that ultimate defeat is unavoidable, but she would compensate losses in the west with gains in the east, among which Lithuania is gambled on as an asset. No recognition of Lithuanian independence can be sincere when coupled with the von Hertling terms, but if this sop will add to Prussian man power it may postpone somewhat the inevitable day of reckoning and give her more time to Germanize in the east with a view of confederating the new republics under Junker rule.

The Raid on Zeebrugge and Ostend

British Naval Exploit That Damaged Two German U-Boat Bases on the North Sea Coast

The little Belgian port of Zeebrugge fell into German hands in the Autumn of 1914, and, with the neighboring port of Ostend, became a thorn in the side of the Entente by reason of its increasing use as a base for enemy destroyers, submarines, and aircraft. The Germans, having seized the shipbuilding plants at Antwerp, began building submarines and small war craft, which could be sent by way of Bruges down the canals that connect the latter city with Zeebrugge and Ostend. Especially useful to them was the maritime canal whose mouth at Zeebrugge was protected by a crescent-shaped mole, thirty feet high, inclosing the harbor.

On the night of April 22-23, 1918, a British naval expedition under Vice Admiral Sir Roger Keyes, commanding at Dover, aided by French destroyers, undertook to wreck the stone mole at Zeebrugge and to block the entrances to the canals both at Zeebrugge and at Ostend by sinking the hulks of old ships in the channels. The episode, marked as it was by heroic fighting, proved to be one of the most thrilling and picturesque in the naval operations of the war. To Americans it recalled Hobson's exploit with the Merrimac at Santiago, while to Englishmen it brought back memories of Sir Francis Drake and his fireships in the Harbor of Cadiz.

Though the fighting at Zeebrugge lasted only an hour, the British lost 588 men, officially reported as follows: Officers--Killed, 16; died of wounds, 3; missing, 2; wounded, 29. Men--Killed, 144; died of wounds, 25; missing, 14; wounded, 355.

Six obsolete British cruisers took part in the attack. They were the Brilliant, Iphigenia, Sirius, Intrepid, Thetis, and Vindictive. The first five of these were filled with concrete and were to be sunk in the entrances of the two ports. The Vindictive, working with the two Mersey ferryboats Daffodil and Iris, carried storming and demolition parties to the Zeebrugge mole. The object was to attack the enemy forces and guns on the mole, along with the destroyer and submarine depots and the large seaplane base upon it, and thus to divert the enemy's attention from the work of the block ships. As the attack on the mole accomplished this, the main object of the operation was successful.

The attacking forces were composed of bluejackets and Royal Marines picked from the Grand Fleet and from naval and marine depots. Sir Eric Geddes stated in Parliament the next morning that light forces belonging to the Dover command and Harwich forces under Admiral Tyrwhitte covered the operation from the south. A large force of monitors, together with many motor launches and small, fast craft took part. One of the essentials of success was the creation of a heavy veil of artificial fog or smoke. The officer who developed this phase of the attack was killed in action. The general plan was to attack the guns and works on the Zeebrugge mole with storming parties, while the concrete-laden cruisers were being sunk in the channel. Two old and valueless submarines filled with explosives were to be blown up against the viaduct connecting the mole with the shore.

STORY OF THE FIGHTING

A detailed narrative of the affair was issued by the British Admiralty on the 25th, the essential passages of which are as follows:

The night was overcast and there was a drifting haze. Down the coast a great searchlight swung its beam to and fro in the small wind and short sea. From the Vindictive's bridge, as she headed in toward the mole, with the faithful ferryboats at her heels, there was scarcely a glimmer of light to be seen shoreward. Ahead, as she drove through the water, rolled the smoke screen, her cloak of invisibility, wrapped about her by small craft. This was the device of Wing Commander Brock, without which, acknowledges the Admiral in command, the operation could not have been conducted.

A northeast wind moved the volume of it shoreward ahead of the ships. Beyond it was the distant town, its defenders unsuspicious. It was not until the Vindictive, with bluejackets and marines standing ready for landing, was close upon the mole that the wind lulled and came away again from the southeast, sweeping back the smoke screen and laying her bare to eyes that looked seaward.

There was a moment immediately afterward when it seemed to those on the ships as if the dim, coast-hidden harbor exploded into light. A star shell soared aloft, then a score of star shells. The wavering beams of the searchlights swung around and settled into a glare. A wild fire of gun flashes leaped against the sky, strings of luminous green beads shot aloft, hung and sank. The darkness of the night was supplemented by a nightmare daylight of battle-fired guns and machine guns along the mole. The batteries ashore awoke to life.

Landing on the Mole

It was in a gale of shelling that the Vindictive laid her nose against the thirty-foot high concrete side of the mole, let go her anchor and signaled to the Daffodil to shove her stern in.

The Iris went ahead and endeavored to get alongside likewise. The fire was intense, while the ships plunged and rolled beside the mole in the seas, the Vindictive with her greater draught jarring against the foundations of the mole with every lunge. They were swept diagonally by machine-gun fire from both ends of the mole and by the heavy batteries on shore.

Commander (now Captain) Carpenter conned the Vindictive from the open bridge until her stern was laid in, when he took up his position in the flame thrower hut on the port side. It is marvelous that any occupant should have survived a minute in this hut, so riddled and shattered is it.