THE RUSSIAN EXPERIMENT.

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20898, 4 July 1933, Page 13

THE RUSSIAN EXPERIMENT.

ro riiF. kditoii or tub ranss. Sir,—Your correspondent, "Countryman," displays a very limited outlook and casts a reflection upon the intelligence of Jack Doyle. It is not within the bounds of reason to expect the best sicie of Soviet Russia to be continually paraded for a visitor's benefit when the object of such a mission is to enquire deeply into the conditions prevailing. Neither is it the intention, or is it humanly possible to smother evidences not in keeping with the ideology of workers' control. "You want to see the worst as well as the best? Theodore Dreisler was asked by his guide, and this guest of the Soviet Government visiting Russia as a result of the intense propaganda against the U.S.S.R. in 1928, was taken into a peasant's hut to view conditions still existing, and which were responsible for the old capitalist regime to be known as dark Russia. A peasant, his wife, their son and daugh-ter-in-law and three children of this couple, seven in all, occupied a room 15 feet square, with an earthen floor covered with straw. In one corner of this room were the family cow and goat. Such morbid conditions are still to be found in soviet Russia and do not forget other eyesores inherited from the capitalist system will continue to engage the attention of Soviet rule for some time to come. It is well to place ourselves in the position of those whose intelligence we directly or unknowingly question, and statements such as "Countryman" forwards that communists piloted Jack Doyle into the sunny side of Soviet Russia will not stand a close investigation. Perhaps, in the case of your correspondent. I err, for it is possible, I believe, to find types of humans so lacking in moral courage and common sense that it would be possible to lead them just where and when desired. But not so Jack Doyle and the unbiased visitor to the Soviet Union, who see in the comparison between the old and the new social systems, human beings, acting in quite a natural manner, working industrially. This, in the not far distant future, will completely replace the old with all that makes life good and beautiful and free.—Yours, etc., iff July 3, 1933.