STORMY DEBATE

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIV, Issue 236, 18 September 1934, Page 5

STORMY DEBATE

SOVIET ADMISSION Fierce Attack By Swiss COMMUNISM DENOUNCED (By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright.) (Received 18, 1.45 p.m.) GENEVA, Sept. 17. The League’s political committee, by 38 votes to 3, with seven abstentions, approved Russia’s admission after a stormy debate launched by M. Motta, Swiss Prime Minister, who, amid applause, fiercely attacked the Soviet, asking whether a Government which proclaims and practises expensive militant Communism fulfils the , conditions of admission to League. M. Motta denounced Communism as llie most radical negation of everything vital to existence, and recalled the Soviet’s anti-religion campaign, adding that the churches throughout the world felt smitten in spirit and flesh for Russian religious sufferers. Russian Communism aimed at world revolution. Switzerland was determined to maintain non-rccognition of the Soviet, as the Swiss Legation at Petrograd Was pillaged in 1918 and an official murdered 1 , but the Soviet had not even apologised, while when an attempt at a general strike in Switzerland nearly nlungcd the country into civil war the Soviet mission had been forcefully expelled because it had participated in the agitation.

■‘Switzerland had no confidence in Russia and oannot co-operate in the act of conferring new prestige on the Soviet, although we hope our misgivings arc excessive,” concluded M. Motta.