ZINOVIEFF LETTER

Evening Star, Issue 19777, 30 January 1928, Page 5

ZINOVIEFF LETTER

FORGERY ALLEGATIONS Press Association —By Telegraph—Copyright, BERLIN, January 29. (Received January 30, at 10 a.m,' A Leipzig message states that the famous Zinovieff letter, which figured in the last General Election in Britain, cropped up at the resumption of the trial of Schreck. Karl Mertens, a German pacificist living at Geneva as a political fugitive, who was granted safe conduct and immunity from arrest in order to attend, created a sensation by giving evidence that a Polish spy named Paciorkovski, employed at the Embassy at Berlin, forged the Zinovielf letter. Schrcck said he was living at the same boarding house as the Pole, and helped him to draw up the letter while committing his own forgeries.

The text of the letter which was alleged to have been written by Zinovicff, at that time chairman ol the Executive Committee of the Third (Communist) Internationa! in Russia, to the Central Committee of the British Communist Party, said that the majority of the British bourgeoisie were evidently opposed to the Russian Treaty, The' proletariat of Britain, which pronounced its weighty word when there was a breakdown in past negotiations and threatened and compelled the MacDonald Government to complete the treaty, must, however, show the greatest possible energy in the further struggle for its ratification and against the endeavors of British capitalists to annul it. It was indispensable to stir up the masses of the British proletariat and, to bring into the movement the army of unemployed proletarians whose position could ho improved only after a loan had been granted to the Soviet Union lor the restoration of Russia’s’s economics. When the business collaboration between the British and Russian proletariats had been put in order, it was imperative that the group of the Labor Party sympathising with the treaty should bring increased pressure to bear on the Government and in parliamentary ciicles in favor of the ratification of the treaty. A settlement of relations between Britain and the Soviet would assist in revolutionising the interna' tional and British proletariat. No less would successful risings in the working districts of England establish close contact between the British and Russian proletariats. The exchange of delega tions and workers, etc., would make it possible for Russia to extend and develop propaganda and the ideals o) Leninism in England and her colonies. The letter proceeded to say that armed warfare must bo preceded by a struggle against the inclination to compromise, which was embedded among the majority of the British workers. This put them against ideas of revolution and the extermination of capitalism. Only then would it be possible to count upon the complete success of an armed insurrection.