SOVIET AND HYPNOTISM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21981, 16 June 1933, Page 11

SOVIET AND HYPNOTISM

ENGINEERS’ ORDEAL “ ALWAYS THOSE EYES, STARING." Mr Alim Monkhouse, chief engineer in Russia of Metro-Vickcrs, one of the four Britons deported from Russia by the Soviet, gave a graphic description of his ordeal to a correspondent of the Daily Sketch, in an interview at Warsaw. Mr Monkhouse said: “ I am convinced that MacDonald was hypnotised by Vishinsky, the Soviet Public Prosecutor. In no other way can 1 possibly explain his curious conduct. 1 cannot understand why 1 was arrested in the first place, and I cannot believe that any of my colleagues were guilty of sabotage in any way. “ Hypnotism—l have told you about that in regard to MacDonald. Now let me tell you how it affected me. When ] was examined by the Ogpu, I say for 17 hours, the Russian authorities for 15J l„ ours —there was all the time that weird sense of being hypnotised- Eyes, eyes—nothing but eyes, that was the effect. And in court, too, no raattei where I turned, always I seemed to meet the staring eyes of Vishinsky.

“You will think, perhaps, that I was tired, overwrought, imagined things. But now here, safe on Polish soil, I know that I am right. I found myself fighting to preserve my line of thought, fighting —lighting, and always those eyes, staring. I kept my sanity. MacDonald, poor fellow, apparently succumbed to their power, and might in his weakness have said things that in normal eondi tions he would never have said. As for my own treatment during my imprisonment, I must be fair ami admit that I had nothing of which to complain. “Am I sorry to leave? Yes—why should I not admit it? I was in love with my work, and did it to the best of my ability. An engineer, like an artist, knows no international barriers—the work, as work, is the thing. And that 1 shall miss terribly.”