A WITNESS FROM RUSSIA

Otago Witness, Issue 3527, 18 October 1921, Page 25

A WITNESS FROM RUSSIA

(From Odr Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, October 5. Mr T om Skcyhill, an Australian soldier, poet, and philosopher, who enjoys con* sicierable reputation as a lecturer both here and in America, and who regained his eight in remarkable circumstances througJi shock ah or having been regarded as hopelessly blind from war injuries, is paying a brief visit to Australia after conducting an independent investigation into the conditions m Russia on behalf of the American Affiliated .Lecture Bureau, lie sounds a solemn warning to all Australians to resist the teachings and influences of extremists lest their own country might be afflicted with the ruin, chaos, und despair that now exists in Hu ssia. Mr Skcyhill does not hesitate to condemn a« malicious falsehoods, manufactured and disseminated by anti-red propaganda bureaux, much that has been said ugairist the Bolshevist regime. Such, he said, were the stories about the. nationalisation of women and wholesale bloodshed and promiscuous killing, and hr jays a tribute to the honesty of Lenin. “Lenin, the man, I believe in; Lenin, the Communist, is impossible,” he declares. But he is oonvinced of the economic fallacy of the system, and draws a terrible picture of the conditions as he witnessed them. After crossing the frontier disguised as a Swedish electrical engineer, he lived for a time with a family which assured him that ‘.tr over two years they had subsisted on rotten fish and sodden black bread, and that was all they had to offer him. One had only to look at their blood-

shot eyes, their emaciated faces, and their hair falling' out, he says, to know that they were telling the truth. Everyhing in Russia was free to those who worked, if it was available. But it was not available. The fuel famine was dreadful. Some were allowed to get enough for the “samovar.” Others had to huddle against one another in the bathroom —the smallest room in the house and depend on bodily warmth to keep them alive. Cholera, diphtheria, and smallpox were prevalent, and the mortality was very great. “As Russia stands,” says Mr Skeyhill, “she is an ulcer in the body politic of the world. It must be cured. 1 favour absolute trade with Russia but not with communism. The nations of the world will have to meet. Russia half way. They should say to Lenin, ‘Give up Curhmunism and all its fantastic Utopian ideas and recognise a modified form of capital and we will remove the restrictions on your exports and imports and recognise you.’ Lenin will stay in power, but Cumtnunism will go —has gone, in fact.”