SOVIET WORRIED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 83, 8 April 1933, Page 9

SOVIET WORRIED.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT.

Consequence of British Trade Embargo. QUIET TRIAL OF BRITISHERS. (United P.A.—Electric Telegraph-Copyright) (Received 12.30 p.m.) LONDON, April 7. The Moscow correspondent of the British United Press says that Soviet leaders are not underestimating the seriousness of Britain's threatened retaliation for the arrest of the Vickers Company's employees.

Britain is the largest buyer of Russian products, consequently an embargo would be disastrous.

The trial will be a quiet affair. It is to be held in a small courtroom and will be quite different to earlier "show" trials.

Apart from a few vitriolic editorials against the English "diehard hysteria" news of the whole affair is confined to formal communiques. The Government obviously is holding publicity strictly in check. In closing the debate in the House of Commons on the bill empowering the Government to apply an embargo to the importation of Russian goods, the Foreign Secretary, Sir John Simon, said he hoped the powers conferred on the Government would not have to be used. That depended upon the Russian authorities. He trusted this act —conducted in the light of day before the world— would bring home to the Soviet the gravity with which the British Government regarded the situation. The British Government was not pursuing a selfish, vindictive or incorrect course. It was merely trying to help the imperilled Englishmen in Moscow. By 291 votes to 41 the committee stage of the Russian Imports Bill was passed by the House of Commons, and the bill was read a third time. On the Government motion it was recommended to limit the duration of the proclamation to three months.

Government Action Explained. In his statement to the House during the first reading of the bill the Foreign Secretary, explaining the action the Government had taken, said that on the night of March 11 the Ogpu police searched the house where some of the engineers were living and arrested Messrs. Monkhouse and Thornton, who were removed at two o'clock in the morning to prison. Next morning Messrs. Cushny and Mac Donald were similarly taken off to gaol.

Nobody disputed the sovereign authority of any foreign Government, but he was entitled to call attention to the circumstances immediately accompanying the arrests. At the same time the Ogpu police in the same prison not merely sentenced 35 Russians to death, but carried out the sentence there and then without, so far as was known, any trial, and certainly without putting into motion any ordinary judicial proceedings. Shot Without Trial.

"When the Foreign Office received a telegram that a certain number of British engineers were in the hands of the Ogpu and another telegram came stating that the Ogpu had shot 35 people without trial, I thought I was entitled to A. . ."

The end of the sentence was lost in cheers.

"Three or four days before the shooting of 35 Russians the Soviet Press stated that 45 Russians had been arrested for the crime of agricultural sabotage."

Sir John added, amid laughter, that the deliberate propagation of weeds in the fields and the lowering of crop yields was one of the charges.

Continuing, he said: "The British Ambassador immediately inquired as to the charge on which tho British arrests were made, where the arrested persons were located, and whether they could be visited. As it was rest day, the answer was delayed till the following day."