PLAIN TALKS

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXXII, Issue 12534, 22 April 1935, Page 2

PLAIN TALKS

TFJRRORISAI IN RUSSIA

REVOLUTION REVIEWED. There are some who criticise the Labor Party because it apparently complains about the policy of Hitler, Mussolini, and tbe other dictators, but is silent about Russia and the dictatorship of the Soviet. Tho London “Daily Herald,” the organ of the British Labor Party, however, is very critical of the recent policy of terror, and in a leader, says : “Terrorism begets terror. And of the taking of lives there seems to bo no end. This year has been a black one for Europe. “The Juno slaughter in Germany, the murder of Dolfuss, the assassinations of Marseilles, the murder of Kiroff, the executions in Russia, the Communist shootings in Bulgaria, the bloodshed in Spain. “That, seventeen years after the Revolution, the Soviet Government should still lie resorting to secret trials and wholesale executions is a shock to its friends, an asset to its enemies. “That in the years of revolution thero should have been terror was no surprise. It is deplorable; but it happens. “Weak regimes, fighting desperately with their backs to the wall, turn to desperate measures. But the Soviet regime to-day has not even that, inadequate excuse. It is strong and firmly established. “Yet under the provocation of a single assassination it revives the methods of . the years of revolution. That is impossible to justify. They claim that they have evidence of. Widespread murder plots by emissaries coming from abroad. “They contend that the accused have been tried in secret because publication of the evidence, incriminating officials of foreign Governments, might have given rise to dangerous complications • comparable to those between Jugoslavia and Hungary.

“There may he force in these arguments. But they are, emphatically not enough to justify, on the part of tt civilised Government, the shooting out-of-hand of dozens of people who may or may not be guilty. “British Labour, which has protested against terrorim in Germany, cannot condone in one oountry what it condemns in another. The Rm sian executions are barbarous and unworthy of a regime which professes .to be the most advanced in the world.”

Air. Hamilton Fyfe, in an explanation of the attitude of the Soviet action, writing in the “Daily Herald,” says: “Before the Revolution they went to church because they were told they must. Now they mostly stay away because they are told the priests decieved them (which they certainly did). They used to revere the Little Father. Now 'they revere busts' and portraits of Lenin and Stalin. Blit they could he driven back to 'church and persuaded to revere 'the Tsar again—or Trotskjv-if the right argument were iised. “The .only kind of Government they can understand is one imposed on them. The only .way to impress with the stability of the Soviet systeril is to crush conspiracies against it with a. resounding, demonstration of power. “To suggest- that there should at onco.be 'free speech and a free' Press in Itussia, and that plotters of revolt should he gently handled (as we did. not handle them in Ireland, by the \vay) is to ignore the danger of this enormous peasant class. The rulers of the U.S.S.R. cannot afford to treat the danger lightly.”