REPLY TO THE POPE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 74, 22 February 1930, Page 9

REPLY TO THE POPE.

RUSSIAN PERSECUTIONS. MORE CHURCHES DEMOLISHED. ROME Feb. 21. The Vatican has received a report of a wireless message which was intercepted at Vienna of a broadcast speech by M. Yaroslavsky, head of the “Godless League,” directed against the Holy See. M. Yareslavsky boasted that immediately following the Pope’s protest he caused six large churches to be blown up or otherwise demolished, exclusive of those in country districts. As a still more worthy answer to the Catholic provocations, he was preparing the complete destruction in ten days of all the leading churches in the ten largest cities in the Soviet Union. A message from Riga sets out a manifesto to workers from the “Godless League”: “Dam us as they wish, we will not retract from the road which Lenin showed. The day will come when the Godless workmen of the world will turn the. Vatican into a museum, and erect the Pope’s effigv beside that of the Siberian witch doctor Shaman, as monuments of the Papal swindle.”

RESUMPTION OF RELATIONS. HOUSE OF BORDS DEBATE. (British Official Wireless.) Received February 22, 10.5 a.m. RUGBY, Feb. 21. In the House of Lords to-day, the Earl of Birkenhead called attention to the resumption of diplomatic relations with the Soviet Government and asked whether the Government had found it necessary to represent to the Soviet Government or to its representative in London that there had been a breach of the conditions or understanding upon which relations were resumed. He referred to the recent protest made in the House bv the Archbishop of Canterbury against religious persecutions in Russia and to the primate’s desire to keep the protest from politics. Lord Birkenhead declared that he knew of no definition of politics which would exclude the topic with which the primate had been concerned. The pledge of the Soviet Government to curtail propaganda and the activities of the Comintern had been broken. It was notorious that there had been no cessation of energetic action against us in India or Afghanistan. Lord Birkenhead denounced as “an impudent, clumsy forgery,” the reported declaration by the Metropolitan of the Russian Church to the effect that there was no religious persecution in Russia. Lord Parmoor, replying for the Government, said that if any statements were made by the Comintern, which rendered it necessary in the opinion of the Government to break off diplomatic relations with Russia, the Government would deal with them in the same way as it they had been made by the Soviet Government itself. The Government did not attempt to define the distinction between those two bodies. But in the opinion of the Government there had been no such breach as made it necessary to break off relations.

Continuing the debate. Lord Cushendun said that ho thought the breaking off of diplomatic relations with the Soviet was the only policy offering a hope of improved intercourse. It was the only policy reconcilable with the dignity, history and instinct of the British people. Lord Newton said that the Bolsheviks differed in mentality from the whole people of the world. They were like the boa constrictors. The only proper way to deal with them was to keep them at arm’s length. Lord Ponsonby, in reply, said that Russian propaganda, in the Tsarist davs, consisting of clever intrigue in India, Afghanistan and Turkey, was far more dangerous than an insignificant newspaper circulating in London’s slums. Lord Birkenhead had allowed himself to become the leader of antiBnlshevik hysteria, the only motive of which was to embarrass Mr Arthur Henderson’s negotiations. APPEAL TO SALVATIONISTS. LONDON, Feb. 20. General Higgins appeals to Salvationists throughout the world to join the other denominations on March 10 in “praying to God to intervene and stop those who may be brutally beating' men and women seeking to worship Him in Russia, and that He strengthen, support and deliver' those who may be suffering unspeakably.” General Higgins explains that he hesitated to express his views because of the doubt as to whether the reports are true or exaggerated.