BOLSHEVISM IN THE EAST

Taranaki Daily News, 31 May 1927, Page 11

BOLSHEVISM IN THE EAST

MARCH OF EVENTS IN CHINA VIEWS FROM EASTERN STATION. WORK OF THE PROPAGANDISTS. Writing on March 25 to a New Plymouth resident, on the Chinese situation, an officer on a ship in Chinese waters has something to say that is particularly interesting in view of recent events in the Chinese and Russian situations: —■ “It is pleasing to note that at last you see 'some significance in present events in this maddened country as leading up to our inevitable crash with the Soviets. “ ‘Those whom He is about to destroy, God first makes mad.’ Ye gods, events have been mai thing swiftly in Shanghai during the past few days. The foreign population of the settlement must thank, first the Defence Force, and, secondly, the Home Government for their promptness in dispatching this force, for the fact that they are alive to-day. “As the ‘Harmonious Fist Society’ of over a quart er of a century ago was humorously dubbed the ‘Boxers,’ and afterwards turned out to be no mere joke, so also has the political and military situation in China to-day outgrown the jocular adolescence it was hitherto enjoying. In passing, it is suggested that if at any time I should send you Shanghai papers containing items of vital, I can hardly say Imperial, interest, s : nce we as a nation are not interested in China Imperially, you could do worse than send the choice bits to the editor of the paper. I suggest this as a small piece of propaganda which might do a world of good, for how' can we expect foreign support and sympathy, for the unhappy position which we (Britain) are in to-day, in this anti-British country, when we have not yet got the support of the more moderate of the. Labour Party at Home? “Only propaganda can combat propaganda, and we are now faced with combating the propaganda of Soviet-Rus-sia, most alarmingly perfected after ten years of practice, backed up by centuries of the proverbial Russian cunning and astute diplomacy. With the fall of Shanghai (native city) and the expected fall of Nanking (it has probably fallen by this time, 8.30 p.m., March 25), we find the Cantonese, or “Nationalist’ troops as they, in their sublime innocence of Russian Imperial designs, style themselves, the conquerors of about two-thirds of this vast country, and it would not be untruthful to say that they have hardly carried a victory by sheer force of arms.

TALKED INTO TREACHERY. “ ‘How, then, have they done it V you can be excused for asking. Simply by their advance guard of propagandists, either Russian Communists or Chinese, trained at special schools in Moscow or Canton. General after general of the Northern army has been talked into treachery by these glib-tongued propagandists, so that in some cases whole army corps of the Northern troops have ‘gone over’ to the South. The Northern Navy, sent down for the ultimate protection of Shanghai, hoisted the ‘Nationalists” ensign shortly after their arrival. “All these things, besides many more, are achieved in China by an army of orators and half-educated youths armed with handbills depicting the most indescribable things. They afe children of Sov-iet-Russia’s mighty brain. She has a mighty brain and it will be no mean feat indeed when our Empire has defeated this Colossus, as she most assuredly will. British people are often spoken of as having too great an opinion of themselves; to my mind we hold an opinion not high enough by far. When will you people learn that our mission on earth is to direct all other nations in the paths which they will ultimately tread. But time is nowgrowing short. We shall see what we shall see! though many will not live to see the sun rise on that day. . . I wish sometimes that you would ask me questions about China, and Russian intervention in the affairs of this huge ungoverned, and seemingly ungovernable, country. People living on the fringe of our Empire are liable to treat such things as being of no consequence, probably because they are not sufficiently informed. For instance, the arrival of the Duke, I’ll wager, claimed more prominence than the fact that Comrade Borodin had been appointed military adviser to the Cantonese army. “On the one hand, admitted, we have an attempt to bind the Empire together more closely; on the other we have an undisguised, though indirect, attempt to wreck the whole fabric. Which, I ask you, is of paramount importance?

“Strictly, one is as unnecessary as the other is futile. For decades tourists have delighted their puny souls and narrow minds by hurling stones at the Sphinx, but he still gazes steadfastly ahead as he most certainly will continue to do when the stone-hurling humans are less even than the stones they delight in throwing.”