Manawatu Evening Standard. TUESDAY, JUNE 30, 1925. THE MENACE TO CIVILISATION.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLV, Issue 177, 30 June 1925, Page 4

Manawatu Evening Standard. TUESDAY, JUNE 30, 1925. THE MENACE TO CIVILISATION.

A few men. greedy of power and authority, are to-day controlling iuo lives and destinies of the hundred or so millions of people inhabiting Russian territories, and so misgoverning them that they have brought famine, pestilence, desolation and death into large areas of country which, in prewar days, were looked upon as the granaries of Europe, supplying as they did so much of the breadstuff's required by the Western States and Great Britain. During the seven years of its Socialistic and Communistic rule, the Soviet Government of Russia has swept away fifteen million of the country’s peasant proprietors, to whom it tirst gave the land, only subsequently to nationalise ft; reduced the number of cattle and live stock by one ball ; similarly reduced tho productivity of the soil; compelled farmers to take payment for their crops and stock in paper money, ot so worthless a character that ‘‘a barrow load could he purchased for a penny” of English money, and destroyed more than hall the village stores. These facts are well authenticated, and we hare it on the authority of Dr. Horsley Gault, formerly Chief of the Medical Division of the Leningrad (Petrogrud) unit of the American Relief Administration, that "judged by Western standards, about one-half of the population of Russia would to-day require medical treatment.” Writing in the British Medical Journal ot August 23, 1924, Dr. Gault says: “Most people in Russia have had no new clothing for seven or eight years, and have had to sell part of what they had for food. Owing to lack of soap and hot water bathing as a cleaning process was nearly altogether discontinued, even by people who were normally neat.” The scarcity of food was such that Dr. (fault further says. “Dogs, cats, horses, camels and even rats were eaten in 1920, 1921 and the winter ol 1922. Quite frequently dogs and men could he seen in the streets of Leningrad (Petrograd) fighting over the carcase of a horse. On many occasions 1 have seen peoplo eating roots, wild berries, the bark and leaves of trees and ‘bread’ made of dirt and grass. As late as July, 1922, 1 saw personally two eases of cannibalism, and in September of that year in a village of South-eastern Russia, in twenty out of twenty-five huts 1 inspected at random, there was one or more persons actually dying of starvation, too weak to get up. ’ To say nothing of the wholesale massacres of the Intelligentsia and the Bourgeoisie; of the .ruthless murders and atrocious deeds committed by tile Bolshevists in enforcing their authority over the people: the fact remains that less than a tenth part of the Russian people are in sympathy with their Soviet rulers. But they are so enchained that they cannot possibly free themselves from the Communist autocracy which enforces its authority with a’ malignant ferocity which Catherine Broschkovskaia, a famous revolutionary suriiamed .“Babushka, or “the grandmother of the revolution,” declares lias made “the life of the proletarians and the Russian peasants a martyrdom. Never in the

time of the bloodiest Tzars and of the most ignoble Government,” she says (writing in the Paris Matin of the 7th February 1925) have tho Russians suffered as they are suffering to-day.” According to this revolutionary, “whose soul has been made sick” by the dreadful conditions under which her fellow countrymen and country women are living, “the commissars of the people have only one desire: to stay in power and make personal profits as long as possible.” She says, further, that “if the Bolshevists ask unceasingly for money it is not for Russia, but for carrviug on their propaganda abroad. All the manoeuvres of Moscow, all the activities of the Bolshevists in Asia, tho treaty that they have just signed with the Japanese, all that is part of the formidable blackmail that they are exercising against Europe, in order to consolidate themselves and remain in power.

THE BOLSHEVITE THREAT IN ASIA.

Not content with the ruin they have brought upon Russia, the Bolshevists have been practising upon the ignorance and credulity of the peoples of China and Japan, with greater success possibly in the Celestial Empire than in the Mikado’s country, although in the latter they have fomented trouble amongst the workers, which has caused the Japanese authorities considerable anxiety The outbreaks at Shanghai, Canton and Hong Kong are clearly the work of the Communist agents of the Moscow Government, and appear to be mainly directed against the British. Camouflaged as strike movements, they really constitute insurrectionary risings against the British. The attack made upon the jhameen, the European quarter of Canton, where the British, French ami other Powers concerned hold concessions, proves that. The mob that marched m procession and attacked the Shameon was led by Russian Bolsheviks, and accompanied by 2000 soldiers disguised as Yunnanese labourers.. Early in the month the cables informed us that the Communists were growing so strong in Canton that “they were able to challenge the nonCantonese mercenaries, who, though numerically stronger, dreaded atSen's Russian gunners and were taking fright.” A conflict was even then regarded as inevitable, and now, unfortunately, a clash of arms has occurred and ties Civil Governor ol Canton is endeavouring to throw the responsibility for tho affair upon the British and the French, whose soldiers and police, are charged by him with having opened fire upon the processionists. But the British ConsulGeneral. who witnessed the whole affair and narrowly escaped being shot, declares emphatically that the attack upon the Shamoen was begun before either the British or the French soldiery opened fire, and that ho himself was present with the senior naval officer, “for the purpose of preventing precipitate action on the part of the defenders.” “Evidence front all quarters.” it was stated in briday s cables, “is that it was not a peaceful procession, hut a thoroughly organised militarv attack.” The ITong Kong and Pekin demonstrations, again, appear to have been organised in much the same way, and although no overt attack 'was made upon tho Legations in the Imperial city, owing to Chinese troops and police being on guard, it is significant that the piocessiouists carried banners inscribed ' Declare Mar Against England. and ‘ Death to the English Brigands. Strikes and industrial disturbances are fomented by the Communists because, to quote the Thesis of the Third (.Moscow) International, they “niav develop into civil war, in the course of which it will become the task of the proletariat to conquer the power of the State.” In the Chinese disturbances-, the strikers are arrayed against the Europeans, who are being boycotted, and the facts point t'o collusion between certain of the Chinese authorities and tile Bolsheviks. Foiled in one direction the Soviet maintains its propaganda and intensifies it elsewhere. It- is at least significant that the Chinese outbreaks, mainly directed, as we have said, against the British,- have occurred since the refusal of the British Government to confirm the £50.000.000 loan which Mr Ramsay Macdonald promised the Soviet, and almost immediately on the heels of its further refusal to grant members ot the Soviet delegation visiting, the li mted Kingdom “extra-territorial rights, which cover immunity from arrest.