The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. THURSDAY. JUNE 9, 1927. THE NEMESIS OF BLOOD.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 134, 9 June 1927, Page 6

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

THURSDAY. JUNE 9, 1927. THE NEMESIS OF BLOOD.

For the cause that lacks assistance. For the icrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance. And the good that ice can do.

Murder is always deplorable, and no rightminded human being is likely to excuse or condone the assassination of the Soviet's plenipotentiary at Warsaw. At the same time, the circumstances of the case make it easy to understand the crime and the motives of its perpetrator. M. Voikoff, the victim, has always been associated in the minds of the Russian people with the murder of the Czar and his family in 1919. The Central Soviet Government has officially denied that Voikoff participated in this crime. But he was President of the Ekaterinburg Soviet in 1919, he was responsible for the safe keeping of the Ccar and the royal family, and he was generally believed to have signed the death warrant which authorised the midnight butchery that closed the tragic career of the Romanoffs. Naturally in the eyes of those Russians who hate Bolshevism, and are still loyal to the traditions of monarchy, Yoikoff has always been a marked man.

But it could hardly be expected that the rulers of the Soviet Republic would be prepared to take a rational view of the situation. A Note to the Polish Government protesting against this atrocity was perfectly in order, and there may be, under the circumstances, some reasonable excuse for the complaint that the authorities at Warsaw did not take adequate precautions to ensure the safety of the Bolshevik envoys. But the heads of the Bolshevik hierarchy, characteristically enough, have seized eagerly on this unfortunate incident as an occasion for inflammatory propaganda of the most extravagant kind, directed primarily against Britain. The Note to Poland declaims wildly about "a whole series of acts aimed at the destruction of the diplomatic representation of the Soviet abroad," and on this flimsy pretext it tries to establish a direct connection between the murder of Voikoff and the recent raids on the Soviet agencies at Peking and London. Such an interpretation of this crime is as childish as the affectation of horror with which the Soviet professes to regard this "unprecedented criminal act." The men who are responsible for the Red Terror and the diabolic atrocities of the Cheka need not be taken seriously when they profess to be shocked by bloodshed. Poland, no doubt, will offer reasonable satisfaction for the offence of the Russian refugee who has infringed both human and divine law in his thirst for vengeance. But the Powers would not allow the Soviet State to take advantage of this opportunity to crush Poland, and thus overthrow this defence of Western Europo against the menace of Bolshevism.