RUSSIA AND GREAT BRITAIN.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18625, 5 August 1922, Page 16

RUSSIA AND GREAT BRITAIN.

SOME CURIOUS CONTRASTS. By Constant Readeb. “England To-day” and “Red Dusk and To-morrow,” the former a social study by Mr George A. Greenwood, the latter a volume of “Adventures and Investigations in Red Russia,” bv Sir Paul Dukes, are two books which offer some curious contrasts and some strange similarities. “The first thought and need of-the human being, whatever his station or fate in life,” writes Mr Greenwood, “is shelter.” And he paints an unenviable picture of the housing conditions of “the New Democracy” in Great Britain: — Go to the great manufacturing centres and there you are confronted by the most impressive structural monument of the age that produced them, the interminable and hideous rows of mean houses, with one general living room below and two above, built as many as 50 together, end upon end, huddled beneath the shadow of black factory walls, of the slag heap of a mine, dumped upon mother earth without a suggestion of deliberate foresight, and proclaiming emphatically a day when town-planning was wholly unknown or wholly ignored. These wretched abodes are not all alike. In Leeds, for example, you will find over 70,000 of the baok-to-book variety, the majority of the blooks abutting on both sides' on to the flagged pavement, with the domestic offices in some cases as far as 60 yards away Their replicas exist—many thousands more—in nearly every town of the north, bare repelling shells, without an inch of garden and innocent of a neighbouring tree. Birmingham and Sheffield, Newcastle and Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester, Bradford and Hull, all these immense human hives vary

only in a slight extent, save perhaps that in some cases the houses have two rooms on the ground floor, aifd below Sheffield, fewer ire built back to back. Moving . westwards, and approaching the great Welsh coalfield, one is confronted with an entirely new manifestation of these dreadful conditions. There, save in Scotland (and even in Scotland the terror is not nearly so widespread), the housing of the people challenges the power of the most lurid description. The great proportion of the people are condemned to a desolation that can hardly be better than death —an existence in old. insanitary, ill-smelling homes, ranged sometimes in endless row® on the plains, sometimes in hideous groups on the hillsides. They are mainly, jerry-built; they are often approached by roads once started but never finished; they are nearly all destitute of gardens, and they have either a minimum of domestic conveniences or none at aIL To this Mr Greenwood adds the perfectly appalling statement: “There are thousands of beds in Wales which are literally never empty. For eight hours during the day they are occupied by one man who works on the night shift for another eight hours by another member of the family on a different shift, and at night by wife, sisters, and daughters.” It may be perhaps venturesome to hazard the conjecture, that so far as housing conditions are concerned, the British working man is worse off than the Russian[peasant, oven under a Bolshevist regime. The companion picture drawn by Sir Paul Dukes is, however, worth attention: —

The room in which 1 found myself was a spacious one. On the right stood a big white stove, always the most prominent object in a Russian peasant dwelling, occupying nearly a quarter of the room. Beyond the stove in the far corner was a bedstead on which an old woman lay. The floor was strewn with several rough sthaw mattresses. Two strapping boys, a liitle lass of ten, and two girls of 18 or 19 had just dressed, and one of the latter was doing her hair in front of a piece of broken mirror. .In the other far corner stood a rectangular wooden table with an oil lamp hanging over it. The little glass closet of ikons behind the table, in what is ‘called “beautiful comer.” because it shelters the holy pictures, showed the inmates to be Russians, though the district is inhabited largely by men of Finnish race. To the left of the door stood an empty wooden bedstead, with heaped up bed covers and sheepskin coats, as if someone had lately risen from it. All these things, picturesque, though customary, I took in at a glance. But I was interested to note .an old harmonium, an unusual decoration in a village hut, the musical accomplishments of the peasant generally being limited to the concertina, the guitar, the ,babalaitra. and the voice, in all of which, however, he is adept.

Speaking of England. Mr Greenwood inquires: “How in these homes do the people live?’’ Ho declares that as a rule rent and food absorb something like two-thirds of the income of the working class family. Admittedly much depends upon the women, whether they are good managers, indifferent and oftentimes bad managers. The woman at the helm is frequently “beset with difficulties for which she is hot responsible and before which the woman of the well-to-do classes would collapse.” On this point Mr Greenwood waxes eloquent:— j Even , the problem confronting the woman in the three-roomed back to back house in the manufacturing town of the north, whose one room below is scullery, washhouse, nursery, dining room, and drawing room, pales into insignificance bv the side of the truly unhappy lot of the woman in the two-roomed tenement in London, Glasgow, or Manchester. In nearly all cases, however, there is a minimum of convenience for cooking, -baking, washing, and all other domestic tpsks. It is really a life o( slavery. The most tragic example of how these conditions prevent even many women with the will from exercising the most necessary domestic economy is to be found in the mining areas. The home, as a rule, is Wretchedly ill-equipped _ for cooking purposes, and the changing hours of a man’s shift, the probability that two or three members of one 'household (including lodgers) are all working at different times, the fact that for all the workers baths have to he provided, that in thousands of oases the water has to be carried in from standpipes on the roadways and heated on the kitchen fire, and that there are the constant wants of the children, demanding attention; all this moans that if the women had the elementary facilities, they simply have not got the time to prepare fresh wholesome meals. Consequently ■ there is a wholesale resort to tinned goods. My amazement at the thousands of empty meat, fish, and fruit receptacles I, see on the tips in colliery areas never ends. It is a wasteful, ' unhealthy way of living and it is largely responsible for the stories one hears of the miners’ extravagance. But it is as intelligible 68 it is deplorable. This wasefulness in a land of plenty is in striking contrast to the thrift in a land of famine. Against Mr Greenwood’s description of the fare of the British minor, may be set Sir Paul Duke’s account of a meal partaken of in a Russian peasant’s dwelling: I asked if I might have some milk to drink and at a sign from the old man one of the boys fetched me some 1 in a big tin mug. “It is hard to get milk nowadays,” grunted the old peasant surlily, and went on with his work. The boys slipped on their sheepskin coats and left the cottage, while the girls removed the mattresses and sot the samovar. I rejoiced when I saw the old woman preparing to light the stove. At last the samovar was boiling. I was invited to table to have a mug of tea. It was not real tea and tasted nothing like it, though the package was labelled “Tea.” Black bread and salt herrings made up the meal. I did not touch the herrings. “Wo have not much bread,” said the old man, significantly, as he put a small piece in front of me. ... At mid-day I lay down on Uncle Egor’s bed and fell fast asleep. At 3 o’clock they roused me for dinner, consisting of a large bowl of sour cabbage soup, which wo all ate with brown polished- wooden ispoons, dipping in turn into the bowl. Uncle Egor went to a corner of the room, produced from a sack a huge loaf, and, cutting off a big square chunk, placed it before me. “Eat as much bread as you like, my son,” he said,

The reason of the changed attitude of the old Russian peasant, when from grudging the stranger a small piece of bread, lie out him a huge square chunk off the loaf, is finely brought out by Sir Paul Dukes when ho writes; —

“I like music.” I said. “Will you please play something afterwards?”

Ah ! Why was everything different all at once—suspicions evaporated, fears dissipated? I felt the change intuitively . . . by my passing question I had touched his tenderest spot—music! . . . You could see that in music he forgot everything else. The rotten old harmonium was the possession he prized above all else in the world—in fact, tor him, it was not of this world. Crude old peasant as he was, he was a true Russian. In contrast to the Russian peasant, in love with music even when ground out of an old harmonium, it is interesting to place the British worker, not longer content to live by bread alone. “Sport is practically the only outdoor pleasure of the people,” says Mr Greenwood: otherwise a great part of the leisure of the worker, his wife and children is spent “at the pictures.” Nevertheless “the public house and the drinking club have not yet lost their capacity to attract.” Yet Mr Greenwood’s consideration of the social habits of the British workers “ends inevitabjy upotl a note of pessimism.” He exclaims: — The fact that there should be a growing aversion to the drabness of life in the wretched homes of the dull industrial centres is perhaps a hopeful and encouraging sign; but that it should find ex-

pression in a restless search after pulsating pleasures, complete absorption in things so fleeting, so trivial, and in certain instances so definitely harmful, is saddening and disturbing, accompanied, as it is, by the almost complete dethronement of home life and all that this should stand for. . . . The street, the cheap cafe, the amusement resort—all these influences are rapidly gaining the commanding influence. ' It invokes a corresponding lack of parental control of children, especially those who have reached the adolescent stage, who are probably earning wages and who are persuaded that to do what parents and older friends do is the assertion of their own manhood and womanhood. They spend the early part of their lives amid influences which are almost bound, in the main, to be unfavourable, to produce a generation too faithfully modelled upon that which has gone before, and to encourage vacuity, when what we require more than anything else is trained, alert, intelligent thought. The Tit-Bits mind is dominant and the “News of the World.” with its three million Sunday sale, its record of crime and misconduct and stage and theatrical gossip, measures the extent of the serious contemplation of the great majority of the people. It is the most fitting complement of those hopeless surroundings in which we compel four-fifths of the people to live, and the most natural manifestation of an environment rarely if ever stirred by greater things. Sir Paul Dukes, who was formerly Chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service in Soviet Russia, utilises this record of his investigations and adventures in Rea Russia to point a moral and to adorn a tale. He declares that the policy of the Bolshevist Government is "categorically repudiated by practically the entire Russian nation,” and that the Bolshevists retain power “only by bullying the workers and peasants” by whom they pretend they have been elected. Moreover, he believes that the Russian people "by wondrous patience and invincible endurance overcoming their present and perhaps even greater tribulation” will present a great and inspiring object Wesson to the world. Mr Greenwood, for his part, inquires, “What is the central fact that emerges from this survey of contemporary England?” His answer is on this wise:— It is surely the universal and fundamental unrest that affects, quite impartially, every class, the uncertainty and discontent which colours life and makes it so unsatisfactory. There could at this moment be no folly greater than deliberately to underrate, to discount, or to refuse to face the gravity of the general disturbance. There is, for example, manifest in all classes a fondness for extravagance and pleasure, a lack of care for moral issues, little trouble about such problems as those presented by starving Russia and Austria. About half the people vote at bv-elections. There is a formidable development of the ego, a slackening of discipline, an indifference to consequences. The divorce courts teem with outraged wives and wronged husbands; a man whose acquaintance with firearms dates only from the war, discovers his lover’s infidelity, and at once, as a natural course, shoots his rival; •what appears to be a,n extraordinary number of parents are summoned for cruelly treating their children; the spread of bad and frequently revolting language is astonishing. All these manifestations imply a slackening of the moral code and a coarsening of the mind which make excessively foolish and'stupid' the famous clergymen who almost hailed the war as an agency for the uplifting of mankind. Tet Mr Greenwood and Sir Paul Dukes are at one in hailing religion as the only solvent for the ills olike of Russia and England. While due place is given to the influence of education, the last word is left for religion. “There is one factor in the Russian problem,” writes Sir Paul Dukes, “which is bound to nlav a large part in its solution, although it is the most indefinite. 1 1 mean _ the power of emotionalism. Emotionalism is the strongest trait in the Russian character, and it manifests itself moat often, especially in the peasantry, in religion.” He adds;— The people flock to church more than ever they did before, and this applies not only to the peasants and factory hands but also to the bourgeoise, who it was thought were growing indifferent to religion. This is not the first time that under national affliction the Russian people have sought solace in higher things. Under the Tartar yoke they did the same, forgetting their material woes in the creation of many of these architectural monuments, often ouaint and fantastic but always impressive in which they now worship. I will not venture to predict what precisely may be the outcome of the religious revival which .undoubtedly is slowly developing. The heading “Religion in .Eclipse" would seem to indicate dial Mr Greenwood is not able to take a hopeful view of England. He writes:

The war, which found organised religion in eclipse, left it in the sortie state. It is possible to go to Sunday morning service at a Nonconformist ohapel in any large town and find not one in 10 of the seats occupied. Leaders of' the various denominations still send out their despairing messages about shrinking membership and contrasting funds. . . . Nothing can be clearer than the fact that the root of the issue lies in the gulf which separates the churches from real religion. A people whose entire life is a problem and a struggle, whether with poverty or riches, are not going to be moved by the weekly repetition of creeds and dogmas. Church division, insistence that a man must believe in Transubslantiation, the Apostles’ Creed, Strict Baptism, or the Elect of God, 1 have found to be hold in derision by most of the non-ohuroh-going people to whom I have spoken, and particularly the workers. What they who can view the present state of the country, the Empire, and the world, with equanimity, who are either indifferent to it or frankly live for the advancement and gratification of self—what they require is a great explosive mission that will shake them to a vital souse of acute responsibility. What they who ore religiously minded want is a virile social interpretation of the Bible. They despise a faith which in its organisation knuckles so much to wealth and power and makes material success a subject for exaltation. Nor can such a distorted interpretation of Christianity have any other than a base influence upon the possessor of riches, making him feel secure in his possessions, by whatever means he has come upon them, and failing utterly to inculcate in him a sense of the. obligation of these possessions. Those two books should be studied carefully side by side. Taken together, they will act as mutually corrective, conveying a now view of England, and a new view of Russia, thus helping to bring a better understanding of two great peoples, upon whose progress the prosperity of the civilised world must largely depend.