RUSSIA'S WAYS.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17756, 7 May 1923, Page 5

RUSSIA'S WAYS.

NOT FOR AUSTRALIA.

(MOir OTO OWH COEHESPOSDEHT.) SYDNEY, April £5. "What Mr E. G. Wells thought about Russia and the tragic results of its social experiments in recent years fell upon deaf ears amongst the Reds of the Sydney Trades Hall. Mr Skeyhill, the popular Australian soldier-travel-ler-lecturer, with his burning words of warning on hig return from that .illfated land, met irith no mors credulous hearers amongst those who saw everything through crimson spectacles. Jfiven ono of Australian Labour's idols, Professor Meredith Atkinson, with his logical analysis of all that he saw, faileu to impress extremist obstancy. In the lorefront of tho iinpiacablo disbelief of all who dared to see anything but wisdom, justice, and right is in toovietisni and its Wussian exponents stood -Mr J'. 8. -warden, secretary of the Sydney Labour Council. Mr Harden and his followers advocated .Russian methods, and Russian, militancy, and every line published in the papers recounting the disastrous confluences amongst the unhappy Siav3 Tney imdiscriminatingly dubbed the propaganda of some vast capitalistic combination to hound the workers into slavery. They bred discontent with all that unionism had won. It could be proved by economists that employees in industry reaped the bulk of its harvest; that if the total profits were distributed tho wages already paid under the arbitration system would not be substantially swollen; it could he shown that a great proportion of the workers owned their own houses, had j a degree of leisure never before enjoy- ' ed by workers anywhere, and had only to work contentedly and regularly to increase that prosperity. All was jeered and laughed at, and Mr Garden and his followers called for Sovietism and nothing but Sovietism, and even established Sunday schools to inculcate their doctrines of class war into the ?]■'• i n U" d - Then Mr Garden, the High 1 nest of Communism, was chosen to represent Australian Labour at the Red Internationale at Moscow and when ho got there he boasted that Communism had undermined Labour in Australia and was "bossing" the ijabour movement. Since then Mr Garden lias seen much of Russia, and now he ,s back in Sydney, apparently a sadder and a wiser man, and his i first words nro a confession that Russian methods would not do for Australia, and that his views are much chnngec -that Labour's policy must be > less bellicose, ho has to tell of Russia, he fears, will "shock" his comrades. Mr Oakes, the Acting--1 remier, in a pungent comment on this I change of front, reminds Labour that what. Mr Garden now says Nationalism has said all along.