Manawatu Evening Standard. WEDNESDAY, AUG, 19, 1931. THE RUSSIAN MENACE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume IV, Issue 221, 19 August 1931, Page 6

Manawatu Evening Standard. WEDNESDAY, AUG, 19, 1931. THE RUSSIAN MENACE.

Considerable alarm lias been caused in England in recent months by the dumping policy of the Soviet Government. Yet, notwithstanding protests against the peril to the Empire in this menace, the Labour Administration refuses to acknowledge the need to protect Britain’s industries and Empire products from the unfair competition of Russian forced labour. English papers recently to hand reveal the extensive nature of Russia’s exports to Britain. Wheat, timber, soap, furs, butter, tinned salmon, oil, poultry, sweets, fruit and coal comprise a comprehensive list affecting every one of the Dominions and Britain’s dependencies. The Gold Coast exports of manganese are cited as an illustration. In 1929 500,000 tons of this metal were sent abroad, and the expanding business led to the construction of a special wharf in Takoradi Harbour. The Bolsheviks then flooded the world with cheap manganese produced by their slave labour, with disastrous results to production on the Gold Coast, its revenues, and to British shipping engaged in the trade. It appears to be the plan of the Bolsheviks, while exporting to Britain whatever they can despatch, to concentrate now and again on one particular line. Last summer it was wheat, which was. sold at 24s to 26s a quarter. No lower price had been recorded in a generation, and Canada and Australia suffered serious hayrn. Now it is butter that is being unloaded in London in the effort to ruin British and Dominion producers, as the Bolsheviks have instructed their agents to dispose of it at prices well below current rates. The dumping of manufactured goods has also started with the export of millions of razor blades which are being sold in Sheffield, the centre of Britain’s industry in this instance. British journals have drawn attention to the disorganisation of the market which Russian butter may eventually cause, and legislation has been demanded of the Government to arrest at once the danger to the Empire, but the Labour Administration remains indifferent to its people’s welfare. Recently, when Lord Pliillimore introduced into the House of Lords a Bill to prohibit the importation of products of convict labour or forced labour, Lord Ponsonby, for the Government, said its proposals, if given effect, would lead to the breaking off of diplomatic relations with Russia. Viscount Hailsham, Leader of the Opposition, immediately taunted the Government with fear of trouble in its own ranks if the Bill were passed.

THE TWO PLANS. Writing in the London Daily Mail, Lord Hardinge of Penshurst, president of the Anglo-Russian Economic Society, and former Ambassador to St. Petersburg, gives an illuminating outline of the Russian scheme and what it means. There are, he points out, two Five Year Plans. The first was put into operation in 1928, and is expected to be fully completed at the end of next year, twelve months before ,the allotted period. The details of the second plan, he says, are now being finalised, and it will come into operation on the completion of the first one. In. a general way, both plans aim at making Russia advance one hundred years in two giant leaps, Lord Hardinge states, so that, by 1938, if official optimism is justified, Russia is to “attain and surpass in economic activity the foremost countries of the world.” Such a task would be gigantic for any country, but for backward Russia it suggests something approaching the superhuman. For this reason Lord Hardinge finds it “not surprising that the Soviet plan ingeniously contrives that we should provide the essential means for its realisation, and thus not only render the Russian market independent of our products, but establish the Soviets as formidable competitors in every branch of international industry and commerce.” The second plan is intended to consolidate the achievements of the first, and if the latter works to schedule Russian farming in 1933 will be a State controlled industry, run by serf labour on large scale methods by up-to-date machinery, the produce being handled ,by the Government. Under its control will also come ever increasing quantities of other primary products, and these, with an unprecedented output of machinery and manufactured goods, will form the starting point for the second advance. By these means, aided by an annual output of electricity ten times larger than in 1913, and by a thoroughly reorganised and reconstructed transport system, the Soviet Government proposes to put into operation its second Five Year Plan. Summing up the position, Lord Hardinge says Russia’s efforts must bring* disorganisation and chaos to every market in the world, since they aim at the creation of a new economic force for the destruction of the existing order. “The intelligent observer cannot therefore doubt that, setting political considerations aside, the success * of those plans must constitute a formidable menace to the rest of the world. The situation is one which demands thought and the devising of defensive measures.” The question which industry and agriculture in Britain asks isWhen will the Government realise the threat to the country’s economic structure and take the necessary defensive measures ? That they are necessary is emphasised by the alarm felt in England regarding the policy of dumping. Meanwhile, the Russian people suffer (lire privations to bring their leaders’ plans to fruition. While the Soviet undersells Britain’s Dominions on the Home market the people there pay 20s a pound for butter and £2 a cake for soap, and are forced to work under conditions repugnant to a civilised world.