SOVIET RUSSIA

Otago Witness, Issue 3662, 20 May 1924, Page 22

SOVIET RUSSIA

BERLIN EMBASSY INCIDENT. "MOSCOW, May 14. Rantzau, the German Ambassador, and Litvinoff, Russian Foreign Commissar, had a lengthy conference with reference to the Berlin incident. Litvinoff demanded the customary apologies, recognition of the extra-territoriality of the Foreign Mission, punishment of those responsible for the searching of the Russian Trade Delegation’s offices, and payment of an indemnity. The Russo-German Railway Conference, for which the German delegates have

arrived, has been postponed sine die owing to the present dispute between .he two Governments. FACLST AND BOLSHEVIST. LONDON, May 14. The Tirnes’s Rome correspondent says that relations between Rome and Moscow have never been so cordial as now. From various sources comes confirmation of the rumour that M. ltykoff recently visited Rome, and had conversations with Signor Mussolini. It is understood that he arrived in Italy from Vienna, and the Italian Government is said to have facilitated his passage at the frontier, where M. Rykoff presented a passport bearing the name of an engineer, M. Popofl. In order to avoid recognition, he did not even visit the Russian Embassy at Rome, but stayed at a private hotel for two days, during which he had meetings with MusRUSSIA AND ITALY. ROME, May 14. II Popolo dTtalia, the official organ of Faeism, publishes an interview with Trotsky, who is reported as saying that the Soviet economic system will nave to bo modified according to the exigencies solini. TROTSKY’S WAR SPEECHES. LONDON, May 16. The Times’s Riga correspondent states that the Soviet leaders who assure foreign pressmen of their peaceful motives, and explain that the Soviet military preparations are solely of a defensive nature, adopt an entirely different tone when addressing select gatherings of their own followers. Trotsky at present is trying his hardest to instil a martial spirit into the Red army by almost daily speeches, in which he unfolds vistas of great and glorious revolutionary wars, particularly in the East. One of the most striking of ms recent speeches was delivered at the Moscow Military Academy. He unfolded a plan for organising all Russia’s peacetime industries on a war footing. He said: “We must regard the whole of our economic life from a military standpoint. This applies particularly to the chemical industry, which we must systematically organise for chemical warfare ’’