The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. THURSDAY, MARCH 22, 1928. RUSSIA'S PLEA FOR PEACE.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 69, 22 March 1928, Page 6

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

THURSDAY, MARCH 22, 1928. RUSSIA'S PLEA FOR PEACE.

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

A few weeks ago Litvinoff, the Soviet Republic's delegate to the preparatory Conference for Disarmament, submitted to the Powers a sensational proposal to abolish war by destroying or disbanding all navies and armies at once. It was fairly obvious that Litvinoff's scheme had been drafted primarily for the. purposes of propaganda at home or abroad. There was therefore not much chance of securing its acceptance at Geneva. But if and Avhen it was rejected, the Bolsheviks could always claim that they had offered to abolish war on a grand scale and that the Powers had refused to help them. For the time being the Disarmament Committee seems to have refused to take Litvinoff seriously. But now, as a matter of diplomatic courtesy and also with the object of leaving the Soviet State no pretext for misrepresenting the situation, the Committee has discussed the Russiaa scheme in detail, with results that can hardly be satisfactory to Stalin and his colleagues.

The duty of analysing and criticising Litvinoff's proposals was undertaken by the British delegate, Lord Cushenden, and he seems to have performed his task in quite a masterly fashion. Expressing polite but ironical admiration for the lofty moral purposes inspiring the scheme, he proceeded to discuss the various expedients suggested by Litvinoff, and he showed that they are one and all irrational or impracticable. But the most effective portion of his speech seems to have dealt with general principles rather than with material facts. Ignoring for the moment the amenities of diplomatic convention, he asked Litvinoff pointedly whether Russia's anxiety to get rid of war applied only in the sphere of international affairs, or whether it extended also to civil war. And if Russia is sincerely desirous of ending all wars, how can she reconcile with this purpose I her policy of fomenting civil strife and stirring up revolution in every country throughout the world ?

These questions have naturally occurred to everyone who has reflected seriously upon the character of the Soviet system, and the relations that exist between Russia and the Powers. But it was high time that they should be put formally and officially to the representatives of Russia at Geneva. For the inability of the Bolsheviks to make any satisfactory reply reveals at once the hollowness and insincerity of their professions. No doubt it is true, as Lord Cushenden argues, that the real purpose of the Soviet State is not to assist the League of Nations in its great task of promoting world peace, but to obstruct and, if possible, to destroy it. But the difficulty with Bolshevism, as Lord Cushenden suggests, goes deeper even than this. The doctrine of the Class War which assumes the implacable and eternal hostility of the wage-earners to every other class and section of society, and threatens with destruction the whole existing civilised order of things, is the very foundation of Bolshevism, and so long as Stalin and his friends hold to these principles there can be no hope of security or peace for Russia or for the world at large. The attempt to carry the Marxist Class War principle to its logical conclusion has produced results in Russia itself that seem to us horrible and deplorable in the extreme. It is simply monstrous that those responsible for all that has befallen Russia in the past ten years should now pose as the heralds and champions of peace, and it is well that the grotesque hyprocisy of their pretensions should be exposed to the derision of the world.