HIDEOUS DAYS

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 91, 14 October 1926, Page 11

HIDEOUS DAYS

TERROR SEEN ON EVERY FACE

"BY ORDER OF.THE GOVERNMENT."

(From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, Sth September. Mrs. Alee Tweedie, F.R.G.S., brings back to London a heartrending account of conditions in Russia under Soviet rule. The bulk of t'<o people there are more or less starving, they are overworked and underfed, and there is terror on their faces. Mrs. Tweedie was in Moscow and Siberia. Never, she says, in all her world travels lias sho encountered such heartrending sights "as seen'in those hideous days in Mos-

"Men, women, and children lay huddled on doorstops asleep at night. They slept in. hundreds under the walls for shelter. „. Old men 'and women with a newspaper across their shoulders for warmth. Homeless —tens of thousands of ill-clad living beings—think of it I And foodless, too. And all the tima their Government was screwing taxes out of everyone and spending the money upon its own laudation in foreign lands. Taking food from the | mouths of its own peoplo for a propaganda of lies. Russia's distribution of untruth is simply marvellous. She ladles out daily the moat amazing bluff to the whole world. In Russia no one lives any longer in his own house. Everything is shared, from houses to wives and families. Hous.es are communal property. Therefore every house, big or small, is measured out in square feet, and into so many square feet so many human beings have.to bo packed ,'by order of the Government.' Everything is 'by order of tho Government,' and the Government has swollen to ten times its official size under the Soviets. WORLD REVOLUTION. "Thoso two- words literally hound one in Russia and Siberia. They are placarded up. They arc on everyone's lips. They appear in every play. They are shrieked in .vulgar rongs at music halls. The theatres and tho museums have not been, destroyed and remain excellent. A number of Russians arrived in Japan in October, 1925, to preach Soviet doctrines and to explain the success of Bolshevism. The Japanese, being wide aw^ce in this,, as in all else, put a cordon, of police round them when they landed, and never left them day or night. It did the trick. The Russians blustered, were furious, and, finally, went home again. China let them in, and js now busy getting them out. A GRAVE OP SECRECY. "The Soviet Press was naturally a source of interest to me, and its fabrications struck me'dumb. TheTO .is really only one important Bussian paper of moment. That, of course, is a Government organ. Such is the boasted Free Press, rehashed in every town with a few inches left for local news. Free speech is equally smothered. All letters are opened on entering and leaving the country, and many never reach their destination. No one over knows anything; no one ever dares say anything; Russia is a grave of sccroey and silence. Every house is spied on. If it is known that a good picture or a pieco of valuable furniture remains, the police call. ... In this land of freedom one is taxed for everything. There is a tax of two shillings for getting up on the wrong side of a tram-car. Thero is a ten shillings tax if you walk o- the wrong side of the>road. . . The largest, indeed, most of-"the Eussian shops have been confiscated, bag and baggage, without redress by the State. The service in them is appalling. May I never have to enter a State-owned shop again, or pay its prices. There is no competition. ... A HOLOCAUST. "Rt'/»a, as it is, is the most cruel, the most demoralised death-trap the world has ever known. Yet many of tho rulers are clever men, brilliant men, who must have seen how their ideals have failed, and who must now know the terrible condition to which they have brought their country. But they have not the courage to own it. And, withal, thousands of pounds at a time are sent to London for Soviet propaganda, for a handful of well-in-tentioned Communist Britishers to be inoculated with the virus that has brought about such sights as can be seen, in every back street of Moscow or Leningrad. No .pen could describe tho irony, tho cruelty, the tragedy of modern Russia us I saw it with my own two eyes . . . Russia to-day is the most poverty-stricken, miserable, uncivilised country in the world. Why, China is wealthy and civilised :ind happy by comparison. In Russia and Siberia terror is oh evexgj !§cg, ami,!

the result of hunger palpable. Our poorest Briton is richer and lias far, far more freedo'hi than his so-called 'comrade' in Russia. Tho contrast of Russia as I saw it in 1912 un" 1925 was almost unbelievable. To-day it is a holocaust. Shoeless, hungry, without paid work, and without prospect to cheer them for tho future. Poor devils! When they beg, they arc-run-in! When they steal food, they are run-in! "When they do nothing they just fall "and dio. A land of frightfulness. It will probably take Russia a hundred years to got back to the civilised condition she deserted ten years ago by revolution in 1916. Russia is in rags. There are no doles there, and little charity. No one is happy. People are shot without trial. They have been shot in tens of thousands, and they are still boing shot. There is no justice. A wax figure of Lenin in a glass case, his hflad on a scarlet satin cushion, 5 „ a blaze j of electric light, and securely guarded , by soldiers, is the new god of Russia and' the shrine of her people to-day 'by order of the Government.' Churches, denuded of their crosses, are now Communist clubs. BURROWING IN GREAT BRITAIN. "If only our home folk could realise what a great thing, what a wondrous strength and power for world good, honesty of purpose and justice in execution, this British Empire is, they would be as keen to go on building up that Empire as these Soviets are in their desire to destroy that Empire, followed by the whole world, to the condition of ilicir own dire straits. There i 3 nothing a British workman cannot do, and there is nothing a British woman cannot carry*through. Well, let us do it, and do it for the good not only of tho British Empirp, but the ultimate good of the world's peace. The Soviet mole is burrowing in Great Britain today. He throws up lumps of earth here and there. One striko after another, all engineered in Moscow, and the stolid British workman still apparently innocent of the fact. Every penny piece a miner takes from Russia probably sends some starving' child to the grave. Sovietism is a stealthy drug—an insidious poison. Russia is to-day one vast prison, ruled "by a handful of men; there is no free Press, no free speech. The only freedom is freelove. Is SoviejS-Conimunistic-Anarchy to rule the worla by'world revolution, or is British common-sense to assure world peace?"

85, Fleet street,