“A SAVAGE FARCE”

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18065, 17 April 1933, Page 5

“A SAVAGE FARCE”

BRITISH PRESS OUTCRY INTERVENTION ADVOCATED ANXIETY FOR MACDONALD (Elnc. Tel. Copyright—United Press Assn.) (Received April 17, noon.) LONDON, April 16. As the Moscow trial proceeds, the British press denunciations of Soviet judicial methods become deeper and deeper. Not since the Dreyfus case hare influential journals been so outspoken. Tho Sunday Times, in an editorial declares that the evidence of the Rus '•’.an witnesses is not worth sixpence. The court relies almost exclusively on English “confessions.” The Times’ correspondent at Riga emphasises the grave anxiety regarding what has been happening to MacDonald during intervals in the Ogpu prison, and adds that he certainly has been tormented. Foreign observers onsider that his plight is desperate, and that only extraordinary British pressure can save him, because the Ogpu does not allow disciplined prisoners to escape who have rebelled in open court, especially in an impor taut trial exciting general abhorrence abroad.

The Morning Post says: —“It is not necessary fo wait till the end of the Moscow .trial before denouncing the court as a sham tribunal and a savage farce. The spasms of varying testimony wrung from MacDonald prove that the Ogpu is applying strange and vicious pressure. The honor, and perhaps the lives, of six Englishmen are being devilishly .sworn away. We hope that the British Government will intervene because the moment has come to shake off this tyranny. ’ ’ The Daily Telegraph says: “At most, riiis so-called trial is a stench in the nostrils of the civilised world, and the illusion of those fain to believe that there is the seed of social good in the Bolshevik revolution.”

The 'Sunday Times says: “It is safe to say that upon tho 'events of the -next few days may depend the relations between Soviet Russia, not merely with Britain, but with the whole Western world.”

The Prime Minister, Mr MacDonald, lias arranged while aboard tho Berengaria < bound for New York, that he is to be kept informed regarding the Moscow trial. He will eceive coded wireless messages from the Foreign Office.