PROPPED BY MILITARISM

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 46, 23 February 1923, Page 6

PROPPED BY MILITARISM

" The crumbling process of the Communist Party is continuing at an increasing speed " was the essence of a message received yesterday from the Riga correspondent of " The Times." The correspondent stated that the opposition of workmen's groups was causing the central authorities, grave anxiety, the prisons were overflowing with arrested proletarians, and the unemployed were undermining Soviet authority. To-day there comes a message from Moscow, through Stockholm, which throws a new light'upon the state of Russia. The Council of People's Commissaries, dominated by Trotsky, who declared that war was a necessity for Russia, has decided to cut down public expenditure and concentrate upon the production of war material. The war that is contemplated is not defensive; but offensive, to carry the mad gospel of Bolshevism into Germany in the hope of arousing a revolution.

Is not the real spirit of the Soviet plainly revealed in these messages? The Soviet began in violence, and has survived by terrorism. Even that terrorism is now proving powerless to restrain the disillusioned victims of the Bolshevik policy. The Soviet is no peaceful State, secure in the contentment of the people, and setting before the nations an example which they will hasten to copy. Russia is kept in subjection by a minority which now sees its authority crumbling away. The minority has no appeal to make to reason, but only to force—so the props of militarism are to be strengthened and the ruin is to be extended. It I would be strange indeed if educated democracies should continue to defend Bolshevism under such circumstances. Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, the British Labour leader, does not. He states, according to a cable message published to-day, that the Labour Party has as much to do with Bolshevism as the man in the moon, except that it regards Bolshevism more as an enemy than the man in the moon. Not all of the leaders of Labour in New Zealand have yet gone so far as this in proclaiming enmity to, or even disclaiming sympathy with, Bolshevism.