THROUGH RUSSIA

Greymouth Evening Star, 31 March 1933, Page 12

THROUGH RUSSIA

A GODLESS SYSTEM. In a letter to Mr M. Cable, General Manager of the Wellington Tramways and Electricity Department, Mr Walter Binns, an electrical engineer with very wide European and American experience, gives some impressions of Russia to-day (says the “Post”). Mr Cable served under Mr Binns in England nearly thirty years ago. From 1910 to 1930 Mr Binns was in South America in charge of electrical undertakings in Brazil and Parana, , and during the past two years he has been supervising the installation of a large electrical system at Novisad, Yugoslavia. On the completion of this work, towards the end of last year, he returned to England via Athens, Constantinople, and Russia, and the letter deals with his experiences in Russia. The Dnieprostroi power station mentioned is the one referred to in connection with the charges against the Metropolitan Vickers’ engineers. “I got back to England in December after an interesting journey,” wrote Mr Binns. “Fortunately I’m pretty well accustomed to ‘putting up’ with things, roughing it, so I went through my experiences in Russia with a fair amount of sang-froid, but I sometimes wondered how English ladies would have felt on some of the journeys I made. I took with me a heavy overcoat lined with sheepskin and my astrakhan cap, and to me they were invaluable. I slept one or two nights on a hard bench with nought but my own coat and a camera for a pillow, stowing my boots by my pillow to ensure their being available next morning—you are warned to do this! I met one American who had to get out of the train he travelled overnight in, in his stocking feet, his shoes having been appropriated by a. peasant or someone else.

“It would take me long to tell you of all my experiences—how I was arrested by a big Cossack military policeman on my first day in Russia and spent half a day in the hands of the Russian police for the crime of carrying a camera, although I was assured by printed information and Soviet agents abroad that a camera was o.k. in Russia. I tried French and English and German on the police officers at the police headquarters, after being marched through the streets with a crowd behind me for half a mile, but whereas before the revolution many Russians, at any rate, the better class, spoke German and French fluently, now the lower strata appear to learn only Russian. It. was only by the strenuous efforts of the Soviet Tourist Agent that my camera, costing .£lO, was not confiscated, but I had to surrender a film which they suspected, but which I had taken in Constantinople, and eventually I got clear and my visions of a journey to Siberia passed. 1 saw plenty of evidence of starvation, some terrible sights of starving people. AMERICAN PLANT. “1 visited the great, hydro-electric station of Dnieprost roi—opened early in October: the ultimate capacity will Ito about SOO,OOO h.p. One 62,000 k.w. set. was running and several others were almost ready, huge generators, all General Electric Company, U.S.A. The dam and works have been built by American engineers, and they are planning three other dams on the Volga, the largest of which, one near Stalingrad, is to have a capacity of over two million h.p. “We must wait and see how the next f five-year plan works out. They have a t

long way to go yet before they can turn an 'illiterate peasant nation (120 million peasants) into an industrial nation. The disorganisation and lack of efficiency will be a Herculean task to overcome.

“It was freezing in Moscow and Leningrad', a fine tonic after twelve years on the Amazon. It was a- very welcome change to come back into civilised countries like Finland and Germany. The ghost of the Ogpu, the famous Russian police, with its systems of espionage and ramifications everywhere, is somehow always haunting one in Russia. I saw lots of great interest, anti-religious museums and Lenin stunts, but I hope the day will tie long in coming when England and the world are levelled to the Russian state of existence.

“The young people are apt to think that Paradise is what the Soviets have achieved, but we older brethren know that it is a will-o’-the-wisp. The Rus-

sian system is to break down home and family life; religion is banned, the existence of God is denied. The strength of England- and her Dominions is their home life, and character founded on religious feeling. Let

us hope this passing phase of the world will give place to a happier and more prosperous epoch. Some of the ideals of the Soviets and their achievements are quite good, but it is a Godless system.”