ALLEGED SABOTAGE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19917, 10 April 1928, Page 9

ALLEGED SABOTAGE.

MORE CASES IN RUSSIA. FRICTION WITH GERMANY. BROKEN TRADE NEGOTIATIONS. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. (Received April 9, 6.5 pjn.) Times Cable. IiONDON, April 8. The Riga correspondent of the Times reports that the Soviet has proclaimed a general war on bureaucratism. He asserts that subsequent to the Donetz investigations tne authorities discovered that the entire machinery of industrialism in numerous enterprises was being jammed and partly ruined by mismanagement. The delinquent managers were dismissed and arrested. Steps are now being taken to restore order. A message from Berlin says the Russian Commissar of War, Voroshiloff, asserts that Germany is only using the arrest of German engineers at Donetz as a pretext for rupturing trade negotiations with the Soviet. He went on to say the German Government knew itself to be too weak to complete the task and wanted an excuse for withdrawing. Voroshiloff is greatly irritated. The Berlin newspaper, Taglicha Rundschau says the Soviet's methods of negotiation are intolerable to any civilised country. The Soviet must understand that trading is impossible if German representatives are liable to be shadowed, persecuted, and imprisoned on idle pretexts.

Six German engineers were arrested on March 11 at Donetz, in the Don Basin coal region of Russia, for alleged acts of sabotage in the mines. The Soviet secret police asserted that the arrested men were responsible for explosions and fires as part of a widespread counter-revolutionary conspiracy, which they alleged was being financed from British and Polish sources. The German Foreign Office lodged a protest with the Moscow Government- against the arrest of the engineers. It was reported from Moscow on March 12 that the Soviet's Foreign Commissar, Tchitcherin, had put off the German Ambassador, Hen 1 Broekdor Frantzau, with the mere statement that legitimate suspicion existed that the arrested men were engaging in sabotage. In Russia that amounts to high treason and involves the trial of offenders at the Supreme Court. The employers of the arrested men, including the famous General Electrical Company of Germany, declared the charge to be preposterous. It was also reported from Moscow that the President of the Soviet Union, Rykoff, said it had not been suggested that German or British firms mixed themselves in such things, but it had been established that their representatives were implicated in the plot. According to this Riga correspondent of the Times the disclosures of this alleged plot was sprung upon the Soviet Government by a section of the Communists in their excessive zeal on behalf of the secret police. The extent of the Soviet Government unpreparedness, which iresuited in a clumsy explanation, was shown said the correspondent, by a Soviet newssheet containing the official announcement of the plot. The news-sheet also contained some uncensored pages on which it was stated thai the Government did not blame the foreign engineers for the failure of mining in the district, but attributed it fo the incapacity and negligence of < the managers and officials in the Don Basin, and to the prevalence of drunkenness. The correspondent said the drunkenness referred to was due to the State's vodka monopoly. He quoted a letter written by one of the miners in which the latter said : "The Don Basin is flooded with vodka. Not a single day passes (without attacks with knives or murders. Not more than 30 to 40 men go to work on Mondays, nor for some days after holidays. The correspondent said another miner asserted that 30 truck loads of vodka were consumed last year, and that 20 had already been drank fchii year. This drinking caused tho wholesale destruction of buildings by arson and a great loss of money. According "to an explanation from Moscow on March IS the_ arrests of the German engineers were owing to the discovery of an alleged conspiracy to effect the economic, if not the political, independence of Ukrainia, in which German and Ukrainian industrial interests were supposed to be collaborating. It was claimed that the Soviet's action was taken to achieve two objects, namely, the checking of the separatist movement and the overawing of industrialists generally. On the same day it was announced from Berlirj that, the German Government had broken off the treaty negotiations with the Soviet, pending the clearing up of the incident at Donetz. The Foreign Minister, Herr Stresemann, instructed the German Ambassador to Russia to demand an explanation, also that facilities be given for an interview with the accused men. Herr Stresemanc's decision was supported throughout the country. As a result three engineers were released and it was said the other three would be set free shortly. The German Government demanded safeguards against a recurrence of eueb treatment beforo it would consider whether commercial negotiations with Russia should bo resumed. ECONOMIC DISORDERS. MISMANAGEMENT CHARGE. DISMISSAL OF OFFICIALS. LONDON. April 8. The Riga correspondent of the Times states that it is announced from Moscow that serious economic disorders have occurred at Dnierpropetrovsk (formerly Ek3terinoslav) and Zaporozbie (formerly Alexanderovsk), involving the mismanagement of foreign machines. The oftencs# are similar to the Donetz incidents. The management of the Dnierpropetrovsk works made a doctor director of the timber department. Arrests followed. Tho Soviet dissolved the local Communist Bureau atDonetz, and dismissed nine officials for incompetence.