A SERVICE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 69, 21 March 1940, Page 6

A SERVICE.

The book. "I Was Stalin's Agent/' by W. G. Kriviteky, chief of the Soviet military intelligence in Western Eiirojx-. makes one realise the great service the Hon. R. Semple, Minister of Public Worke, has done to Xew Zealand in drawing attention in recent public addresses to the enormity of Stalin's crimes against the people of the Soviet, Poland and Finland. The stark horror of the wholesale purges of the old Boisheviks. officials and even the yotin;; Communist groups staggers belief. Memory reverte to Asiatic potentate-. Tamerlane, Genghis Khan and medieval despots, who, succeeding to power, immediately destroyed their nearest relatives and proscribed all adherents to the late regime. History repeats iWlf. with Stalin on a large scale; where tinRoman Sulla killed in thousands Stalin kill-* in tens of thousands—in his faminemade crises, millions. In the imminent ■break up of the Soviet repime. there may be an exodus of desperate, starving liordes into Europe and Asia, trekking from the '"Soviet paradise"' beloved of dnped Communists. One noted "writer, the Hon. Bert rand Russell, in 1917 in Jiis book, "Bolshevism, Theory and Practice," predicted ciich an event: relevant information eince then of a«rrienltural impoverishment, industrial failure and political disintegration presages each possibility, which would create a tremendous problem for civilised countries. DONALD R. STEWART.