THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS THURSDAY, APRIL 20, 1933 THE MOSCOW JUDGMENT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21471, 20 April 1933, Page 8

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS THURSDAY, APRIL 20, 1933 THE MOSCOW JUDGMENT

The first impression created by the verdicts at the Moscow trial is one of relief. Reports of the proceedings made apparent the perilous position in which the British accused stood, facing a tribunal obviously reluctant to show them consideration. In the spirit and method of the prosecution was undisguised hatred of all things British, coupled with a wolfish energy 1 of denunciation. Their defence was conducted with little skill and no enthusiasm, as was to be expected from the fact that they were allowed only Russian counsel. Everything pointed to a tragic climax, and the terrible tension of the closing hours of the trial, a tension affecting the staff of the British Embassy scarcely less keenly than the accused, can be painfully understood. It is not too much to say that throughout the Empire and other countries this anxiety has been deeply shared. The dreaded climax has not come. What has happened is so grave and so disgraceful that it cannot be condoned, but the sense of relief takes precedence to indignation. What the sentences actually mean can be gathered from their full context in the news published to-day. Deportation is not to be read as equivalent to penal exile, although this is the customary Russian meaning, which amounts to transportation in the sense widely understoo'd. It is not that hideous •thing of long Russiau practice, now modified only because of the danger to the State of subjecting multitudes to cruel and hopeless conditions, but is rather deportation as applied by English law. under the Aliens Act. This is banishment, and in the sentences inflicted at this trial it is expressly joined with a prohibition of return to Russia for five years. This the accused will doubtless be disposed to consider a mild if not a welcome sentence. Those to be imprisoned, however, cannot view thenpros pect with the same equanimity. Imprisonment in Soviet Russia is known to be often a dire fate, and the experience of some thus in the hands of those they are alleged to have politically defied goes to show that these sentences may be as terrible as the conduct of the trial has been unjust. Relief is chastened by a new anxiety. When the sentences on the British accused are considered in the light of the trial, especially the virulent character of the prosecution, the comparative shortness of the terms of imprisonment and the n'ature.. of the deportation make the judgment illogical. This opinion is strengthened when the sentences on the Russian accused are taken into account, for the penalties imposed on them are in general heavier, and six of them are condemned to much longer terms. It may be that Russian counterrevolutionary activity—the charges of espionage, sabotage and bribery have been described as amounting to this in all instances—is deemed more execrable than foreign activity of the sort; but the trial did not indicate this distinction. A tone of contempt marked the gentle prosecutor's comments on the alleged perfidy of his compatriots; when dealing with the British he threw off all semblance of gentleness and declaimed bitterly against them and their nation. It is impossible not to infer that he wished the utmost rigour of Soviet law to be exerted against them. His attitude, his taunts, his epithets, all displayed venom ; and to appreciate his motive fully it is well to remember that he was briefed by the Soviet Foreign Office on behalf of his Government. That Government was speaking through him as an avowed enemy of Britain. But the sentences. fall short of his furious demand; the judges, although finding five of the six foreigners guilty, announce these lighter penalties. Their reasons may later be known, should the Soviet Government commit the indisoretion of allowing these to be made public. Without such guidance, however, it is to be suspected that the bench, acting under instructions from an authority no Russian can dare to question, has made an award in conformity with high political injunction. The Soviet Government, despite the thunderings of its legal mouthpiece against Britain, • fears reprisals. It could not order wholesale acquittal. That would have been to sacrifice' the purpose of the accusations. It dared not carry the political prosecution to its logical result. There was left only this way out of the dilemma. It is a sorry exit. Yet it is not an exit. Events may prove it only a cul-de-sac. For the right of appeal is to be exercised, with a. plea that the sentences be commuted. If that succeeds, the Soviet Government will be thrown back to an admission of the failure of the trial, with an unwelcome reaction in the minds of the subject millions it was designed to influence. Jf it does not succeed, there remains the step represented by the Russian Goods and Imports Prohibition Act, which the Privy Council has proclaimed for early operation. It is sug- | gested that this may be an undesir- ! able step, but it appears the only j possible step. To refrain would be interpreted in Moscow as weakness. But, in any event, are moral issue? to be accounted of less moment than commercial 1 ? An outrage has been committed. Even the expunging of (he sentences cannot atone for the harrowing and degrading experience of these British subjects. Throughout these haunting days Bolshevik brutality has played with them as a cat does with a mouse. Is that affront to international decencies, to the moral sense of Western civilisation, to be undone, by a stroke of a Soviet pen 1 That may be the best these Bolsheviks can now do, and it may have to be accepted as such ; but care should be taken to impress upon them that it must not be done in the usual Bolshevik fashion of yielding with a sneer—and a promise made, like so many more in Moscow, with a deliberate intention of breaking it at the first convenient opportunity. Too long has British mildness been the sport of Communist knavery.