Another incident that aroused feeling be tween the Allies and Germany was the demand that Germany should inake restitution for sink ing the German naval ships at Scapa Flow as the treaty of peace was about to be signed. The British found in the cabin of one of the ships when she was raised to the surface a letter from the government which seemed to authorize the admiral in command to sink the ships. As they were Surrendered as pawns. of war the Allies demanded that a sPecified amtrunt of tonnage in merchant 'ships should. be sur rendered. After many protests an ag.reement was made by which GermanY promised to stir, render merchant tonnage in satisfaction of the claim. The acceptance of the terms removed the last obstacle 'to exchange of .ratificationli, and that last act of the process of rnaking.the treaty was consuminated at Paris' 10 Jan. 1920 when Gennany, Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan and many small nations exchanged mts, fications and brought their war to an 'end. The United States was not represented at the cere mony since the treaty was still nrider ccmsiciera don in the Senate..
The Etolshevist•War In Russia.— The Rus sian Bolshevist government concluded an :ar mistice with Germany 15 Dec. 1917 and accepted the treaty of ' Brest-Litovsk 3 March 1918. Lenin, its guiding mind, accepted the terms re luctantly and it was understood that he would not carry them out if fie could help it. But time was needed to organize the revolution, and the peace, bad as it was, gave him time. The empire was crembling at the edges and it was freely predicted that it would break up into small states. Finland, the Baltic provinces, Poland and the Ukraine seemed assured of separate mdstence in the European part of the old empire, and it was not possible to predict 'what would happen with iSiberia. But the main portion of European Russia wai in the hands of the Bolshevists, a minority of the popula tion, and they were striving harA to retain the position of authority they had assumed. A social and industrial class well organized under the repression of the old government, sup plied with a trained and devoted corps of lead ers, and convinced of its purpo,,es, they had the advantage of being the only authority that com manded obedience.
The outside world had some (lifficuhy in dis covering just what kind of a g,rvernment they were setting tip. That it was di lying along the same course that the French revolution followed was clear and as reports came of terror after terror in "Darkest Russia" the outside world became horrified. The former tsar was exe cuted 17 July 1918 and his immediate family is said to have been killed soon afterward. There is good evidence that the horrors were hot all on one side. Stories from the returned
agents of other governments indicate that some of the severest repression was committed by the anti-Botsheyists in the towns they. took from the Bolshevists. It was class war in its worst form, and to most non-Russian people it was horrible—so horrible that rune is necessary to discover its real nature.
At bottom, the system rests on the soviet, the unit of the organization. Each factory or shop had its organization of workers before the revolution, with central organization, and they had come to look upon themselves as a kind of invisible government organized and ready to spring into life when opportunity of fered. Strung leaders went and came among them, and when they proved themselves too strong for their own safety they fled to neutral countries. The revolution of 15 March 1917 opened the doors for their return, and once back they made their plans to. seize the gov etrunesit. There is reason to believe that they had honeycombed the old army with their in visible 'organization. They believed it was their revokstion and 'struggled to keep it from passing into the hands of the bourgeoisie, whom they considered their enemies. Thus the workmen and soldiers, organized by soviets, became the governing portion of society. When they came uno power the revolution was 10 nionths old. They found the peasants, a large majority of the population, in possession of the landed estates and extremely fearful lest a counter-revolution dispossess thesn. With the peasant they formed a kiud of bargain, allow nag. them representation in the central soviets at A rate unequal-with the workmen. Against the upper classes they warred consistently. To vot.e one must be a inernker.of the soviet and tes join it one must be a workingman. The lack of food aided Lenin. There was, he armounced, a certain amount of food and he allotted it to the workers first If a rich man would not +stork he might die of starvation. Anothet thing that helped Lenin was the fact that his enemies were supported by foreign powers, and by France and Great Britain in particular: These two states had loaned Russia vast sums before and during the war. They were now fighting, said the Bolshevists, in order that these loans be made secure. According to their philosophy the war was fought by these two countries to save the investments of rich men through sacrificing the lives of poor men. They also had an advantage in the existence of many political parties in Russia, small organizations that had sprung up in the early days of the rev olution, each with an idealistic or social raison d'etre that made it difficult to obtain union against the common foe.