BOLSHEVIKS ABROAD.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19236, 27 January 1926, Page 8

BOLSHEVIKS ABROAD.

POLICY OF BLOODSHED. , r RUSSIA AS A "PARADISE." BY E.J.L. The soil of industrial and social discontent musi be watered with blood if the tree of Bolshevism is to reach maturity. There exists no alternative. Such was the expressed conviction of two Bolsheviks, one a Pole in process of deportation, the other a Russian and ex-soldier of the Red Army, whon questioned recently aboard a British liner at sea. To quote, their own imperfect English, ''Must kill" is an accepted maxim among those who would see established n world Soviet. The protest that bloodshed was not only unnecessary, but repugnant, and that it was. moreover, detrimental to the spread of Bolshevik ideals, assuming those ideals were all their exponents would have the world believe, elicited orilv smiles of condescension. "Must kill," was the emphatic answer, "ion cut down the sick grass 1 All right, you cut down the masters —the capitalists." "Could not the same end be served by less drastic means i" Only one Argument. Apparently it could not. It was as- 1 sorted that the people of .many villages in Russia had tried the experiment of bloodless revolt, but that those of the old order had risen in the night and slain them. Disarmament was a useless measure. Killing was necessary. So firm was this belief in killing that any thought of slaughter had coased to repel. In illustration of this it was callously boasted how the Bolsheviks had descended upon Nikolayevsk and massacred 400 Japanese—men, women and children. "And you think it both necessary and good that even the children should have been killed ?" "Yes," was the reply, "it is good—--4001" There followed a smiling demonstration of cutting the air with the hand held flat; pantomimic executions. The ex-Red Army man, travelling the world ostensibly as a "sports tourist," was assisted in the reading of a wireless news bulletin, in which Mr. Baldwin expressed fears that Bolshevism was behind the Australian shipping strike. "Bolshevism in Australia ?" he asked eagerly. "Very good." And he smiled with satisfaction, Russia's Opportunity. Prompted by another item in the same bulletin, this Bolshevik voiced a hope that very soon England would be at war with France, and America with Japan. Thus would four great Powers exhaust themselves, whon Russia would " sweep down." Just what the " sweeping down " would mean was not expressed beyond an eloquent waving of the arm.

The suggestion that Russia would place a dictator at tlie holm of each and every country in the event of the world adopting Bolshevism was denied. Moscow merely wished to show us how to govern ourselves on Soviet principles. Yet any interference with Russia by the British Was resented, as witness the following:— "When in the Red Army, did you fight the British soldiers who were sent to Russia Yes; but why did they come there?" -

The Pole, who was being returned to Iris own country by the British authorities* lamented the fact that though "the world was for the people" he was not allowed to set foot ashore in any of the ports of call en route. Asked the . reason for this, he admitted that he had been one of the company of a ship engaged in the smuggling of arms and ammunition into China.

One tiling was evident from the utterances of both these men: they intended to miss .no opportunity of persuading a willing listener that Russia was a paradise in fact, and not merely in fancy. Their zeal, however, proved, their own undoing. After an unrestrained flow of rapture over the conditions in presentday Russia, where a willingness to work was stated to be the only qualification necessary to free participation in all the amenities of liie, such ridiculous statements were made, and advanced in all seriousness, as, whereas under the old order the masses w-ere almost entirely illiterate, there was now not one person in all Russia who could not both read aha write! Such extravagance of speech has an unmistakably | hollow ring. It was further affirmed that even the aged were clamouring for education; that men and women at 70 years of age were thronging the night schools, books under arm. He who refused to study was ostracised by his fellows, a statement hard of acceptance when contemplating the example of other and more progressive countries, in which the appeal of cultural education finds little response from those who have had the stimulus of at least a primary education. Though many fine theories wero outlined and claimed as practices, little, if any, evidence of the success of the Soviet system was forthcoming. One fact admitted of no argument: Bolshevism was attainable only through the letting of blood.