"FASCIST AGENTS."

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 66, 19 March 1938, Page 9

"FASCIST AGENTS."

OR CHURCH MARTYRS? Archbishop and Clergy Executed In Russia. "MORE MUST BE CAUGHT." United Press Association. —Copyright. (Received 12 noon.) LONDON, March 18. The "Daily Telegraph" Moscow correspondent says there are grave fears that the Metropolitan of Theophan, Archbishop Nishninovgorod, has been shot, together with a large number of clergymen and Church people of his diocese. No details are available, as there was no public trial, but "The Godless Ones," the official organ of Hed militant atheism, announces that "the glorious organs of the political police have destroyed this base gang of Fascist agents," grimly adding: "The struggle is not yet over. The Fascist agents .must Ih* caught and annihilated to the very last one." The Archbishop's "organisation" allegedly worked under orders of the socalled "Moscow Church Fascist centre," which, in turn, took orders from foreign intelligence services.

They were charged with plotting to kill the Soviet leaders, and to dynamite favtories and railways, and also with reporting to foreign spies about the munitions industry and troop movements. They also allegedly formed a bloc with the Trotskyists. M. Krylenko, who was M. Vishinskv's predecessor as Commissar of Justice, has evidently been arrested, as. to-dav's "Pravda" denounces him as "a wrecker of Soviet justice."