WORLD AFFAIRS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 287, 4 December 1930, Page 6

WORLD AFFAIRS.

fi A WEEKLY REVIEW.

(By BYSTANDER.) '

A large number of "counter revolutionaries" have been indicted for sedition and treason at Moscow, and the trial is being staged with carcful attention to that dramatic effect in which the Bolsheviks appear to revel. As the principal witnesses are incriminating . themselves by "confessions" which render them liable to the death penalty, it is difficult to get at the bottom of this melodramatic episode. One professor ended his "revelations" with a fervid appeal to the Court. "I am guilty; shoot me!" The son of another professor has written to the papeis demanding the execution of his father as a "class enemy" engaged in fomenting "an anti-Soviet war." What are we to make of all this? Definite charges are made, against the Governments of prance and Britain, and against such miscellaneous individuals as Poincare, Briand, Sir Henry "Dcterding, the oilmagnate,, directors of dickers Maxim and Co., Mr. .Winston Churchill, and Lawrence of Arabia, that they have deliberately conspired with some of-the accused and their, accomplices to secure foreign intervention in Russia, and overthrow the Soviet Piepublic. Quite apart from the antecedent* improbability of all this, arxl the sheer incredibility of some of the "evidence," it is interesting to notice that at least one witness was far astray in.his dates, resurrecting in 102S two Russians who had died in France three or four years before. The trial appears to be merely a public demonstration intended to stimulate Bolshevik enthusiasm, and especially to exasperate the Russian people against France and Britain. * The Five Years Plan. It may be worth while adding that in all probability this extraordinary incident has some bearing on the Five Years Plan, around which everything in Russia seems to centre just now. The comments made and threats uttered by' demonstrators at the Court and in the streets suggest that one of the object of the "managers" of the trial is to stress the need for the more energetic prosecution of this great scheme. It is not likely that the Five Years Plan will realise the hopes of its promoters. But it is important to notice that, so far as one part of the programme— the "dumping" of Russian goods in foreign markets —is concerned, it is already a pronounced success. During September Russian wheat was selling on the Baltic Exchange at 30/ a quarter, while starvation is said to be rampant in Russia itself. The Soviet Government has already made contracts to export 6,000,000 quarters of wheat before July, 1931, and about one-fourth of this will come to Britain. Russian chickens cost 1/ in London and 20/ in Moscow; Russian apples are 3d per lb in London and 6/ per lb in Leningrad. Russian glucose has been sold in large quantities in London at £5 and £0 per ton below "current rates. Russian soap has been sold at as much as £13 per ton below a similar grade of British soap. Russian fruitgrowers have been selling fruitpulp at a price barely covering cost of production,, without allowing for carriage—the result being that this year "British raspberries, currants and plums, one of the finest crops on record, were left to rot in the fields and orchards." Yet Mr. Snowden still believes in Free Trade. Should We "Take Exception"?' One of the most curious features of the present Anglo-Russian situation is tho tentative and hesitating manner adopted by the British Government in dealing with the Soviet State and Bolshevism. To recur for a moment to the 1 Moscow trial, Mr. Henderson, after reading over the long list of attestations and charges and indictments levelled at Britain by the Bolshevik hierarchs and their tools, has at least gone so far a3 to tell the Russian Government that he "takes exception" to the "unfounded reflections" cast upon his own Government and its predecessor. But so far nobody in England has officially "taken exception" to Russian "dtimping," and the energetic and. persistent propagandists maintained in Britain by the Third International, are allowed practically all the license that they need. It is a relief to find that in the United States, Bolshevik machinations have at last produced something like anxiety and apprehension in official circles. A Committee set up some time ago to investigate.Communist activities in America lias just reported that there are half a million Communists in the States, and 100,000 in New York City alone. The Committee holds that the American Government cannot afford to stand idly by and see America demoralised socially, economically and politically by these pernicious activities. When will Britain—to say nothing of Australia—follow America's lead? An Interesting Murder. A few weeks ago Jack Zuta—known in Chicago as the brains' of the Moran-Aiello gang—was taken unawares by a machine-gun fusillade. One murder more or less does not worry Chicago as a rule, but Zuta, ,who was paymaster of Moran's friends and accomplices, left his account books behind him. Jack Zuta's box has provided that "link between politics and crime" for which a great many people in Chicago have sought earnestly in recent years. Zuta has recorded with exemplary, care the expenditure of every penny that he gdve for "graft" or protection for himself and his friends since 1921. In the box were notes and cheques bearing the name of a municipal judge, a cheque made out to a Supreme Court judge, two cheques made out to State Senators, notes bearing the names of well-known police editors—and so on indefinitely. A balancesheet "for the period ending November 12th" | shows that Zuta had disbursed, roughly, £sO,OOO | in a 1 space of time estimated by the detectives at exceeding one month." The Chicago | "Tribune" thinks that Zuta's legacy "brings the day of reckoning perceptibly nearer." Perhaps so j But, as Mr. Hoover said last week, what America chiefly needs is "a more widespread public awakening" to the heinousness of> racketeering I and, murder and an abandonment of the prevailing non-committal or neutral attitude towards "those who are fighting a courageous battle to suppress criminals," often at the risk of their own lives. Honour Due. "Long before he made his latest record, Kingsford Smith,was recognised as the greatest airman who has ever lived." s When I read this for the first time I was inclined to take it as a specimen of that acute form of patriotism in which the average Australian delights. But, after all, is it not true that "his achievements, which include flying clean round the world without one serious mishap," altogether outclass "Lindbergh's lucky New York to Paris dash"? Yet the ! Americans seized the chance to make a national celebrity and a world hero out of Lindbergh; while both England and Australia very largely ignored Kingsford Smith. Surely, as my Australian critic has remarked, if Lindbergh deserved to be made a colonel, Kingsford Smith ought to be a field-marshal at the very least. Knighthoods are fairly cheap nowadays, and I can't fancy "Smithy" feeling much affinity for titles and decorations. Australia is printing a new postage stamp to celebrate his triumphs, but the Commonwealth and the Empire ought to be able to do something better than ilnvt. , „