City of Paradoxes

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 636, 12 April 1929, Page 9

City of Paradoxes

MOSCOW’S POVERTY AND LUXURY

Dilapidated Streets and Shops

(United P.A.—By Telegraph — Copyright) (Australian and N.Z. Press Association)

Reed. 9.5 a.m. LONDON, Thursday. “MOSCOW is a dilapidated city, full of paradoxes,” declares I*l Mr. Barrington Hooper, the first member of the British trade delegation to return to London.

“The city looks poverty-stricken,” he continued. “The roads are full of potholes, buildings are in a shocking state of disrepair, and everything in the shops is Shoddy. “I never once saw a woman wearing a decent pair of silk stockings. The hotels are bad, some of them are falling to pieces. Yet I saw luxury unexcelled in any capital in Europe at a banquet in our honour, where food and wines, the choicest in Europe, were served. > “Russia sorely needs plant and machinery, and is most anxious to arrange for a supply of these. In my opinion the banks should explore the situation.”

SHREWD SOVIET

COMPETITION AIMED AT U.S. RECOGNITION WANTED Interesting light on the visit of the British Trade Delegation to Russia is given by Eugene J. Young in an article in the San Francisco “Chronicle.” "TOWARD the end of last year, when Americans were being urged to take an interest in this virgin trade field, the shrewd Soviet leaders undertook to see to it that there should be competition that would whet our appetites,” he writes. “Despite the troubles with the British Conservative Government, which liad thrown out their diplomatic representatives, they made known that they would welcome a delegation of British industry and finance to examine the economic situation generally, a large number of constructive enterprises and acceptable bases of finance. “A. L. Scheinemann, chairman of the Russian Soviet State Bank, came to America to let our business men and statesmen know that his country wants to buyV-rme £400,000,000 worth

of up-to-date farm and other equipment in the next, few years if credits can he arranged. “His mission has proved of vast interest to big Americans, and even Secretary of the Treasury Mellon has dropped the embargo against intercourse with Soviet agents and talked things over with him. CLOSER POLITICAL RELATIONS “Thomas D. Campbell, largest wheat grower of the world, who has returned from Russia after looking into the country’s, agricultural problem, reports specifically that the Soviet would like to import £60,000,000 worth of our agricultural machinery and £20,000,000 worth of our roadmaking machinery. “Colonel Hugh L. Cooper, one of our leading engineers, who has been consulted by Joseph Stalin and other Russian leaders, reports that they are using large amounts of our machinery and want much more if they can get it. “On top of these and other hardpan commercial approaches to Uncle Sam, the Soviet diplomatic agencies are letting it be known that they are anxious to get our recognition so they may come into closer political relations with us. “In particular, they are emphasising their championship of the Kellogg Treaty by renouncing war and thus putting themselves alongside the United States and Germany in world statesmanship. So seriously have the British taken the possibilities of this situation and the prospects that Americans will get the cream of a vast trade, that they are moving rapidly to be first in the field. “The Moscow leaders do not want to hand concessions to the British. They have too many. political conflicts with that Empire and would much prefer that American and other capital should he behind them; but at the same time they have vast necessities to meet. Their people are in a mood to demand quick action, and they may have to take what they can get.”