THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS THURSDAY, JUNE 9, 1927. THE MURDER AT WARSAW.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19658, 9 June 1927, Page 10

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS THURSDAY, JUNE 9, 1927. THE MURDER AT WARSAW.

There are facts in connection with the assassination of Russia's Ambassador to Poland that set the deed apart from most instances of this tragic kind. They do not justify it. Murder is ever murder, no matter what the motive or the circumstances, and civilised States, if only in self-defence, cannot tolerate so grave a defiance of the human right to life. But this deed, to be understood and judged aright by the world it has startled, must be seen as more than a lawless taking of life. It was that, and so a crime to be adequately expiated by severe legal process, Yet it is explicable, and its explanation is an essential preliminary to the dispassionate judgment that ought to be exercised. Neither a lust for murder nor a frenzy of fanaticism is exemplified in the dire deed. Even as an instance of relentless vendetta it is outside the ordinary range of violent revenge. This Soviet representative was personally a man of deservedly evil reputation. His signature gave authority to the death warrant of the last Tsar and his family, and he was guiltily a party to its shockingly brutal execution. So clearly was he implicated in that foul act of slaughter that Canada could do no other, when the facts were known, than refuse to suffer his presence, though he had his Government's credentials of respectability. It is not surprising that he has come to a violent end at the hands of a daring Russian monarchist. He had every reason to expect that, when Ekaterinburg's shameful act was avenged, his own willing share in it would be remembered. It is remembered, if not as an extenuating circumstance in this crime, at all events as an explanation which gives it a semblance of poetic justice, however flagrantly lawless it may be accounted. The crime's victim had more than this measure of personal attraction for the assassin's bullet. He was the accredited and exalted representative of a Government notorious for ruthless massacre. The story of the Soviet's abominable Cheka is too well recalled by this rebounding violence to need detailed repetition. Suffice it to say that, by the use of the secret police and the summary methods of this all-powerful organisation, 100,000 Russians held to be opponents of the Bolshevik regime were fiendishly executed during the term of Dzerjinski as the Cheka's head, and these were not all who met violent death at its hands. The assassinated ambassador served a Government having a viler record of political murder than had the Tsarist regime it succeeded, and one hard to match in human annals. The Note handed by it to Poland calls the murder "unprecedented," and complains of "terrorist groups." It has shameless precedent in the coldblooded massacres perpetrated by that Government itself, in its exercise of the Red terror which for ever makes the name of Bolshevik a synonym for bloodthirsty tyranny. This Government now menacingly reserves the right to revert to its claim that Poland is responsible—when there are available further details of the crime. Instead of holding a pistol thus at Warsaw's head, Moscow would be better employed in hard thinking about its own respon sihility, There are details in its own crimes, cloaked by the assumption of a national authority which Russia has never willingly given it, that lend a grimly comic air to the demand. This aspect is not removed by any smug reference'to warnings given Poland about the prevalence within its bounds of terrorist organisations. Setting aside the fondness the Soviet has for establishing such organisations in foreign countries, it has so thoroughly estab lished them within its own borders, for its own purposes, that any nervousness it displays about such activity inimical to it elsewhere is plainly that of a ruffian _ fearine assault by another of his kind. It long ago chose its methods, and has now little ground for condemning others for finding'them useful. This natural reaction to the Red terror is, however, of less interest in a judgment on t>iie event than is : the attempt of Moscow to make international capital out of it. The terms of the Note are characteristic of the Soviet Government. In its ambassador's death it affects to see one of a series of dastardly assaults on itself, committed by foreign Powers. The murder, according to the Note, was not the work of an individual or of a society whose agent did the deed, but of those Powers. They engineered the crime, it is sftid with the shallow cunning for which this Government s missives are infamous, in pursuit of an intention to destroy Russia's diplomatic agencies abroad. It is given rank with China's raid on Russia's embassy at Peking and Britain's search of the Arc-os premises in London. The suggestion is absurd. Perhaps memories of Serajevo have prompted the hope that out of this assassination another international crisis may come. The 'hope is misplaced. It will be extremely diffi cult for the Soviet to fasten a new quarrel on Poland, much less on | Britain, because of this event. The | simple fact is that one of the Soviet's chickens has come home to roost.

The Bolshevik Government waded through blood to power. It has proclaimed death to monarchist opponents. Even its amnesty to the soldiers who fought in the White armies, announced last December, was expressly exclusive of all officers and even of rankers living abroad. It has struck hard and often, with vengeful recklessness, at all and sundry not meekly bowing to its rule. Now one hand against it has struck back. To see in this an occasion of offence against other nations in general is too ridiculous for expression.