june 23, 2017
Light and shade in Russia
At the “All Russia” Congress of the Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates in Petrograd the “Minimalist Socialists” have approved the formation of a coalition government and even the general policy of that body as described by the Socialist ministers. But they charge the Duma with becoming “a centre of tumult under the cover of Imperialist watchwords”, and resolve that, as the Revolution “has abolished all the institutions of the old regime”, it should be dissolved.The General Congress of the Cossacks takes a very different view. Many members of the legislative assemblies which the “Minimalists” want to abolish were also members of the Cossack gathering. The delegates of one regiment demanded energetic measures against M Lenin and the Anarchists, whom they branded as traitors to the country and assassins of her liberty. The President ended a stirring address with an appeal to the Cossacks “to fight the enemy without and the enemy within”. The meeting was full of zeal for the prosecution of the war in union with the Allies. It protested against the notion of a separate peace, and it declared an offensive to be necessary.
Our recent message from Odessa tells us of serious economic, fiscal, and social effects in the absence of regular rule. There has been disorder in many places, although “plunder is by no means universal”. Coupled, however, with three months of “much talking and comparatively little work”, it has led to a dearth of sugar and to the certainty of a serious decrease in all agricultural produce. Taxes are unpaid, robber bands, partly composed of deserters, are at large, and several cases of lynching have occurred. Disorganization of this kind very soon palls upon the orderly and quiet members of society, whatever their rank. Anarchy may have its charms for men like those who have fortified themselves in a house in the suburbs of the capital, and of the delegates from Kronstadt who threaten to bring up mutinous sailors to defend them against the Provisional Government. But even in revolutions the masses of the people soon discover that law and order are their best friends. They love liberty, but they speedily learn that liberty without order is the worst of tyrannies.
june 27, 1917
Value of wild foods
A movement is on foot, headed by Gloucestershire County Council, which has always been advanced in education and agricultural progress, to show the inhabitants of rural districts what extensive supplies of natural food lie at their doors, and to teach them how to utilize them.Following the publication of a guide to “The Wild Foods of Great Britain”, which indicates over 260 articles of diet only awaiting collection by those who have learnt to distinguish them, and provides recipes to render them palatable and nutritious, it has been decided to send to villages and smaller towns demonstrators with travelling kitchens and appliances. They will point out the wild foods immediately available, and show how to prepare them for home consumption.
The amount of wild food that is wasted in England is incalculable. In Continental countries, and to a lesser extent in Scotland, these natural resources have never been neglected; while in most parts of the kingdom some one or other wild product of the countryside has always been used by its inhabitants. The instructors will find that in one place snails, in another the edible frog, in others hedgehogs, in some nettles, or whortleberries, or avrons, or the edible fungus called blewits, and on the coasts dulse and laver and samphire are already commonly eaten, though not to the extent that they were when Cobbett took his “Rural Rides”. It will not be difficult to demonstrate that there are others of the 70 odd food-producing plants, edible fungi, and fresh-water fish equally worth gathering and eating.
In most places there will be found someone, possibly the daughter of the squire, or parson, or doctor, or the wife of the schoolmaster, who will be willing to continue the work after the county council instructors have left, to whom the inhabitants may refer specimens about which they are in doubt. During the winter months, when a large supply of natural food is still available, the demonstrations will be continued with the aid of lantern slides, so that when the critical period arrives, between February and June, 1918 — whether the war should end abruptly or not— practically all the country people of Great Britain will know how to find sufficient wild food in their own locality to keep the wolf from the door.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/register/sinn-fein-and-the-convention-ch6l7mgqw
june 26, 1917
Sinn Fein and the convention
The prospects of the National Convention are not improved by the serious rioting which took place in Cork. It follows upon the return to Cork on Saturday of a number of the released prisoners. On that night windows were smashed and Republican flags were hoisted. Yesterday morning a crowd of Sinn Feiners marched to the county gaol and smashed the windows with stones. They were cheered by the prisoners. The attack was renewed in the afternoon until all the windows were broken, and then the crowd seized the Sinn Fein drill-hall, which had been closed by the military authorities, and planted the Republican flag on the roof. Further rioting took place in the streets, and then the crowd attacked the recruiting office and the Union Jack was thrown into the river. Up to this point the police had hardly interfered at all, but now they were stoned by the crowd and were compelled to charge. For some time the fighting was confused and general. Finally, after the mob began to use revolvers and several policemen had been injured, the military were called out. They mounted machine-guns in Patrick Street and the police made further charges in which they were forced to use their bayonets. In the course of the fighting a man named Abraham Allen was killed by a bayonet wound in the thigh, and about 30 persons are now in hospital suffering from bayonet and bullet wounds.
These riots, following upon the recent disorders in Dublin, provoke alarm among Irish Unionists and disappointment among moderate Nationalists. It must be admitted that up to the present the release of the rebellion prisoners has created an atmosphere of distrust rather than of reconciliation.
The part which is now being taken in the East Clare election by Mr John MacNeill and Mr De Valera discourages any hope that the Sinn Fein leaders will be induced to take part in the Convention. While a motor-car party were proceeding from Limerick to Tomgraney, Co Clare, to support Mr De Valera’s candidature, they found the road obstructed with large stones. While engaged in clearing the thoroughfare shots were fired from an adjacent grove. None of the party was injured, but the motor-car was struck, also a bag, and the petrol tank was pierced.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2017-06-24/register/the-end-of-the-spring-offensive-q35fsxkkb
june 24, 1917
The end of the spring offensive
Midsummer Day is past, nearly half the year is gone, and the time is appropriate for examining the position on the Western front, which remains the decisive theatre of the war on land. The Western Allies began the year with high hopes, which have since been somewhat dimmed by events over which they had no control, but if a balance is struck it will be seen that much has been accomplished in the last six months, and that the outlook is still in many respects cheering.It is our great good fortune that the Allied cause has been chiefly upheld during the past six months by the triumphs of British arms. However modest may have been the part played by our Armies in the opening stages of the war, we can at least claim that in the first half of 1917 Great Britain found opportunities to inflict the deadliest blows upon the enemy. Our prolonged battles last year upon the Somme and the Ancre compelled the Germans to withdraw at the end of the winter along a wide front; in two great encounters we wrested from the foe the commanding positions they held on the Vimy and Messines ridges; we took Baghdad, shattered the Turkish Army of Mesopotamia, and our victorious soldiers penetrated to the upper reaches of the Tigris; and we cleared the Turks out of Sinai and began the invasion of Palestine.
Those who are inclined to think that the war in the West drags on slowly may be advised to study a few of the figures recorded by our Military Correspondent. In the last six months the British and French Armies in France and Flanders have “captured 70,000 German prisoners, nearly 500 guns, masses of trench-mortars and machine-guns, and disposed of some 300,000 German fighters”. In the first phase of the Battle of Arras the British First and Third Armies took 14,000 prisoners and 228 guns. In the second phase the Germans suffered more losses in a short time than they had sustained since “the ever-memorable first Battle of Ypres”. The enemy had a reserve of 52 divisions in the West in early April, but two months later this was down to 12 divisions. The colossal magnitude of the war may prevent onlookers from grasping the importance of these achievements, but their effect is seen at the front in the decline of German moral.
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