The Daily News WEDNESDAY, JUNE 1, 1927. “A LITTLE MORE PATIENCE”

Taranaki Daily News, 1 June 1927, Page 6

The Daily News WEDNESDAY, JUNE 1, 1927. “A LITTLE MORE PATIENCE”

There are few things more calculated to evoke both anger and pity than the spectacle by Mr. Lloyd George—an exPremier of the Mother Country, and therefore presumably possessing a due sense of responsibility in dealing with a crisis which brooks no delay—endeavouring, for party purposes, to make the action of the Government, in dissolving the trade agreement with the Russian Soviet Government, appear to be an ill-considered and impulsive act. The fact that Mr. Lloyd George now occupies an irresponsible position in British international affairs does not give him the right to misrepresent British policy. What makes his action all the more reprehensible is the fact that while he proclaims that the decision of the Government in this matter is the most serious since that of August, 1914, yet, instead of backing up the Government and thereby lending added force to the decision, he adopts the role of the whining waster so frequently met with in police courts, and puts forward the plea for patience, and, by inference, for another chance before being summarily dealt with. Moreover, he cannot plead ignorance of the previous convictions of the .Soviet trade delegation for breaches of the agreement, or ,of their abuse of their diplomatic privileges by attempting to interfere with the domestic affairs of the country. Had he been Prime Minister, would he have merely administered a polite chiding to the Soviet representatives in Britain, and asked them, after every breach, not to do it again, instead of bringing them up with a round turn? Probably not, but in the case of such a mercurial politician it is not easy to conjecture what he would do under any given circumstances, except thrust himself in the limelight, and take no heed of the consequences that might ensue from his impatient and scathing attacks upon the Government of the day. It was the height of presumption and folly on Mr. Lloyd George’s part to assert that “a little more patience would have saved us.” The British Note to the Delegation on February 23 distinctly intimated that there were limits to the patience of the Government and of public opinion. Consequent upon the Arcos raid the Government decided those limits had been reached, and they considered themselves freed from the terms of the agreement. They had, in the words of Mr. Winston Churchill, “shown patience exceeding that of Job, but after Russia’s bad faith had been proved to be bottomless, the House of. Commons, by an overwhelming majority, uttered the short, simple word ‘Go’.” There are not lacking those in various parts of the Empire who would be only too pleased if the undesirable fomenters of trouble could be got rid of as easily by transportation to Russia, where they would be in congenial society until the time arrived for eliminating one another. With his usual straining after sensationalism, Mr. Lloyd George refers to Russia’s one hundred and fifty millions as the greatest people in the world and the most formidable people on earth, yet, as he is veil aware, they suffered complete defeat at the hands of the Japanese, and cannot therefore deserve such superlatives. No one, however, forgets that for a time the Russians were allies of Britain and France in the Great War, their participation in which finally ended in their undoing and their enslavement to the ruthless Soviet system, which developed into a world revolutionary organisation. The British nation—that is, all British people except the extremists who join hands with the Moscow Communists—have a profound and sincere pity for the masses of Russia, but cannot render them any help other than by trade. The British Premier recently stressed the fact that the rupture of the agreement merely indicates in a pointed!

manner that Britain can have no further dealings with Moscow, but that Anglo-Russian trade will enjoy the same facilities as that of other countries. It is important this fact should be thoroughly understood by all the nations of the world, and particularly by Mr. Lloyd George, the whole of whose tirade against the Government thus falls to the ground lik£ a house of cards. It is refreshing to find that the French Government is at last alive to the intensive propaganda of the Communists among the units of the French army. According to the Minister of the Interior, the Government is quite aware of the serious nature of the communistic subversive operations, and in no uncertain terms he has intimated that the Government is prepared to take drastic action if the necessity arise. “Moscow,” he claims, “wants war in order to establish its own domination.” That is the truth in a condensed form.