In March it was reported that four of the People's Commissaries had gone south to organize troops for guerrilla warfare. This idea, however, was soon abandoned. Trotzky insisted upon the necessity of having a strictly disciplined army of 300,000 to 750,000 men, under regular officers. "We cannot," he said, "preserve the illusion that European capital will patiently suffer the fact that in Russia the power is in the hands of the working class. * * * We are surrounded by enemies on all sides. If it were proposed to France to return Alsace, the French Bourse would sell Russia tomorrow." On April 2 M. Podvoisky, Assistant Commissary of War, stated that Russia would form an army of 1,500,000 men, and that the Red Army of Volunteers was steadily growing. The army organization has been changed with a view to limiting the application of the elective principle. According to some reports the Bolsheviki are hoping to have an army of 500,000 by the Fall. Some of the leaders went so far as to advocate compulsory military service. On April 10 Leon Trotzky was appointed joint Minister of War and Marine. On the previous day the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets unanimously passed a resolution ruling that henceforth Russia's national flag would be a red banner bearing the inscription: "_Rossiyskaya, Sotzialisticheskaya Federativnaya Sovetskaya Respublika_," (Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic.) Proposing the measure, the Chairman said: "The Russian flag will have to wave over the embassies in Berlin and Vienna and we cannot have the old tricolor, so I think it most proper to adopt the red flag under which we fought and gained victory." BESSARABIA AND RUMANIA An important event has taken place in the southwestern corner of the former Russian Empire, in the rich province of Bessarabia, where separatist tendencies have recently made themselves strongly felt. A Berlin dispatch, dated April 11, announced that the Bessarabian Diet had voted, 86 against 5, that Bessarabia should join the Kingdom of Rumania. Thereupon, the Ukrainian Premier filed a protest in Russia against this act, stating that the Ukraine must have her say in the settlement of Bessarabia's fate in view of the fact that this province has a large Ukrainian population and that the Ukraine is controlling an important region on the Black Sea adjacent to Bessarabia. The Council of the People's Commissaries was notified on April 9 that the Province of Kazan, situated in the east of European Russia and having a population of 2,000,000, had been proclaimed an independent republic by the Congress of Peasants of that region. RUSSIA AND THE ALLIES