SOVIET ENMITY TO BRITAIN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20743, 10 December 1930, Page 12

SOVIET ENMITY TO BRITAIN.

Should the British Government hesitate to express strong resentment at the tone and contents of the Russian replies concerning recent events, it will merit severe condemnation. Two very serious matters are involved. The first relates to the recent mock trial in Moscow, at which the accused made alleged confessions of complicity with British men of note in planning war on Russia, and the public prosecutor based on their statements a vehement attack on Britain. Mr. Henderson, as in duty bound, sent a protest to the Soviet Government, and the reply is a denial of responsibility and a flippant declaration that the court devoted almost no attention to the matter. This is I playing with serious facts. Whatever show of reason there is for saying that the accused were independently free to give any evidence or make any confession they deemed necessary, although few outside Russia will believe this, no like defence can be made for the public prosecutor, who conducted the prosecution on behalf of the Government. Nor can it be made for those who harangued the people in the chief centres and "promised that the Government would teach foreign States that it is futile to plot with the internal enemies of the Soviet." This matter cannot be left where the Russian Gommissar of Foreign Affairs, speaking by authority, would like to leave it. The second refers to a wireless broadcast speech from Moscow inciting British workers to revolt. This, Mr. Henderson told the House of Gommons, was in his opinion a breach of the undertaking of the Soviet Government to desist from seditious propaganda. He instructed the British Ambassador at Moscow to address a protest to the Soviet Government. Now its representative says that the speech was broadcast from a station outside his Government's control—one under the control of a council of trades unions—that this council had been given no right to broadcast any messages of this sort, and that it will now be told that it must not transmit them. So obvious an attempt to evade responsibility is of a piece with the Soviet Government's frequent attempts to put the blame for its propaganda on the Third (Communist) International at Moscow, attempts that have deceived nobody and been the occasion of former British refusals to hold tho Soviet Government guiltless. Soon after taking office as Foreign Minister, Mr. Henderson was at pains to negotiate an Anglo-Russian agreement including recognition of the Soviet Government. It included also an undertaking by that Government to stop its anti-British propaganda. However little lie likes now the position created by that ardour of friendship with Britain's proved and implacable enemies, it is certain that most British folk like it less, and probable that many of them will tell him so.