DAYLIGHT IN RUSSIA?

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 40, 17 February 1931, Page 8

DAYLIGHT IN RUSSIA?

A Russian threat of cancellation of American imports, if the United States does not admit Russian timber, figures in to-day's cablegrams concerning the Soviet. According to the British United Press correspondent at Moscow, the American objection to Russian timber is that it is cut and transported "tinder prison conditions." This and oilier allegations that the Soviet is carrying on [economic operations by means of

forced labour surely make it advisable that special measures should be taken to obtain an unbiased answer to the vital question whether Bolshevism has found some economic method of legitimately reducing its producing costs, or whether cheap Russian exports are being produced at the cost of breaking every labour principle to which the English-speak-ing Labour admirers of Bolshevism subscribe. Practically, .the ■ Soviet Government is accused of practising slavery (short of slave-owner-ship). The League of Nations has probed into slavery in Liberia, and is thinking of something similar in Abyssinia. Why nto in Russia? It may be true that Llie League did not itself intervene in Liberia. What llie League did, apparently, was to give Liberia the chance to set up its own slavery inquiry, at which the evidence was such that the condition could not be white-washed. Will the League offer Russia a similar opportunity for self-examination? If its enemies speak correctly, Bolshevism need not be fought with gunpowder. Daylight will do.