The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. TUESDAY, AUGUST 26, 1919. TYRANNY AND CRIME.

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 202, 26 August 1919, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 26, 1919. TYRANNY AND CRIME.

For ihe cause that looks assistance, For the wrong that noeds resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that we ■sir. do.

As a reeult of tho freeing of Southern Russia by General Denikin's army the world will be given much valuable evidence of the practical working of Bolshevism- In these territories the Lenin Government ha« had a free hand for some months, and the inhabitants released by the victorious array are able to spoak of what is fresh in their memories. With the. advancing troops are experienced, correspondents, upon whose judgment the world can rely. Hitherto it has been difficult to get reliable newg from Ruseia, and though there is among the mass of evidence of varying quality ample proof of Bolshevik atrocities, the unreliability of much of the news has been used by foreign sympathisers with the Bolslievikfi as a reason for rejecting the charges as a whole. The reports, they say, arc inventions of tho capitalist Press. But a wider door has now been opened into Russia, and the world can see the horrors within. The "intense joy" of the inhabitants of the Pollava district which Dr. Harold Williams observed, joy at being freed from a regime of "raids, arrests, confiscations, and secret executions," is neither a figment of the imagination nor part of a wicked capitalist plot to discredit the Bolsheviks. As the description sent by Reutcr's correspondent of tho dreadful torture house in Kharkofi showe, this joy was founded on tragic fact. The discovery there of the bodice of tortured, men and women shows the Russian Bolshevik at his worst, as an animal with the morality of the jungle coupled to a fiendish ingenuity which only man potiscnues. Unfortunately there is only too much reason to believe that the Bolshevik is often at his worst.

What Bolshevism moans in daily practico ha* been described at length by observers in Hungary, where Lenin's theories were put into operation by h» pupil fiela Kun. Since the fall of that loader his tJovernment has.been charged with deeds similar to those discovered at Kharkotr, but we are concerned here only with lesser crimes. Holslievism in

Hungary, as in Russia, was a. s-ysU-m of robliery and naked class warfare. Property of all kinds belonging to the hated bourgeoisie was ruthlessly confiscated. "Pictures, statues, and other object* of art, jewellery of all kinds, and even collections of postage stamps, must be handed over to the. now regime under pain of being brought before tho dreaded revolutionary secret tribunals," wrote a correspondent. "In moet enses the ro-

volutionary authorities are not waiting for thrsr precious articles to be surrendered voluntarily, but are taking them by force. All these have been confiscated without any compensation to the unfortunate owners. The promised exhibition will be open to the proletariat free, but the hated bourgeoisie will hnve to pay two crowns admission fee." The franchise was limited to "workers," all merchenU, omployors of labour, and persons possessing private incomes being disfranchised. The "Spectator" remarked thnt while the lives of educated people and professional men were not in danger, this class was "treated with calculated disrespect and exposed to every kind of inconvenience in order that the superiority of the proletariat may be asserted." But Bolshevism meant moro than loss and contempt for the bourgeoisie. It meant an iron hand over the

"workers. ,. The workman had to do the work allotted l>y the Government nt a fixed wage. The peasant was included in this law, and required to hand over to the State any profits made above his wages. To keep the worker in order a special branch of the Red Army, known as the Red Guard, was formed. One of its special duties was to break strikesThere is nothing that moves the Socialist of other countries to greater fury than the employment of the military in time of strikes, yet here was a Bolshevik Government, the fine (lower of proletariat progress, using troops to cow the workers.

Tliiu brings ue to the .point that the fundamental objection to Bolshevism is that it is a tyranny. Jt is conceived in tyranny, born in tyranny, ami lives by tyranny. Vile and horrible α-s are the atrocities of the Bolsheviks, they are not the strongest and most telling weapons 1 with which to fight the disease. People who sympathise with the Bolsheviks are ready with the replies that the reports are lie* or exaggerations, that the Russian revolutionaries had extreme provocation, that every revolution is accompanied by bloodshed, and that similar crimed have been committed by opponents of the Bolsheviks. Unconvincing though these arguments are to the anti-Botehevnk, they serve the oth«r sido well. But the basic wickedness of Bolshevism, that it is a class warfare, and so runs counter to every doctrine of truo liberty and democracy, cannot be denied or obscured. It is as much a fact as our own Constitution. The Bolshevik leaders glory in it. From their own words and deede one can easily convict .them, not only of basing society on a class tyranny, but of administering government through a dictatorship far removed from practical popular control. "Our party cry," says Licnin, ie "through the -dictatorship of the proletariat" to communism, and that dictatorship "means an iron power, a power

that will not spare its enemies." The question to press upon ,the .person who flirts with ■Bolsheviem. k thia: "Do you or do you not approve of a system of government which puts all political power into the hands not only of one class, but of a handful of men in that class?" If ;he approves, let 'him. talk no more of freedom and democracy; we know wihere ! he etands. If he does uo,t, lot him denounce Lenin and his associates for the despots they ore.