FARCICAL?

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 299, 17 December 1937, Page 7

FARCICAL?

RUSSIAN ELECTIONS. Sarcastic Comment in London. "VOTERS HOAXED." United Press Association.—Copyright. (Received 2.30 p.m.) LOXDON, December 16. "The Times,'' in a leader, says: "The Russians have proved apparently to their own satisfaction their ability to hold elections in which nobody has the power to elect, and they are now wordily celebrating a victory which they haven't won. "They are unlikely, in the circumstances, to experience difficulty in setting up a Parliamentary in which Parliament will be unable to govern, and the energies of the new deputies are unlikely to be taxed by anything more arduous than attendance at periodic meetings of a mutual admiration society. "Yet it is doubtful whether more than a small, impotent minority of Russians are yet capable of realising tlie manner and extent to which they have been hoaxed.

"Outside Russia the election has been an obvious failure. Their maehinerv was

so childishly engineered and " prearranged. and the results acclaimed so vast a volume of pure gush that Russia's, prestige, which firing squads have been busily destroying, has been still further impaired. All dictatorships are liable to seem droll sometimes, but Russia's widely-advertised attempt to pass off herself as a democracy provided a spectacle half comic and half pitiful."