RUSSIA AS AN EXAMPLE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21980, 15 June 1933, Page 9

RUSSIA AS AN EXAMPLE

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —If the Bishop of Waikato was speaking seriously on the condition of the individual in Russia, I can only presume he has been presented with literature by the Friends of Soviet Union, and credulously believed it. He points to Russia as realising the supreme value of the individual above other countries. What are the facts? Myriad thousands of waif children parentless, homeless, clothesless, foodless, roving town and countryside like wild dogs searching for a bite and shelter. Is that putting a supreme value on the individual for a start? The poor infanta are fatherless because the fathers had been shot out of hand, without trial, by the Ogpu for having in some way displeased the authorities; and their mothers had been conscripted to some factory labour miles away. Does the bishop think that the free love advocated ,and practised, at the constigation of the authorities, and the suppression of all religion, except the worship of the god Lenin, tend to place a supreme value on the individual? Let me assure your readers that the only supreme value the U.S.S.R. places on individuals is to conscript them (adult male and female of workable age) to State industry, ready to switch them over to military purposes the minute the State decides the time is ripe. Already 18.000.000 of them (including women carrying rifles) are being trained in military practices. In my opinion the bishop is doing New Zealand and our Empire a great disservice in wrongfully holding up Russia as an ideal country, for the reason that many'easy-going minds, with leanings to Communistic ideas, will be encouraged to surer beliefs in Communism by the bishop’s commendation of that country. Every Communist and Friend of the Soviet is a latent enemy of our Empire, aa the near future will surely show. Communist U.S.S.R. has already openly stated her intention is to enforce her creed upon the world, and she is not now so impotent as she allows the world to think.—l am, etc., G. Steel. \