SOVIET ANO SABOTAGE

Taranaki Daily News, 16 March 1928, Page 9

SOVIET ANO SABOTAGE

CHARGE AGAINST GERMANS FURTHER DISCLOSURE MADE FOREIGNERS NOT TO BLAME By Telegraph—Press Awn.—Copyright, Received March 15, 8.5 p.m. Times. London, March 14. The Times’ Riga correspondent says further news from Moscow prove© that the disclosure of the alleged Don Basin plot was sprung on the Government by the excessive zeal of a Section of th© Communists for the O.G.P.U. The extent of th© Government's unpreparedness, resulting in a clumsy explanation, is shown by the official news sheet. In this the official announcement of the plot is accompanied by unaltered pages in which foreign engineers are not blamed, but attributing the failure to prevent sabotage to the Don Basin Communist manager’s and officials’ incapacity. Negligence and prevalence of drunkenness are due to th© States’ vodka monopoly A miner writes that the Don Basin is flooded with vodka. Not a single day passes without knifings and murders. Not more than 30 to 40 men are working on Mondays and on the days after holidays. Another declares that 30 truck-loads of vodka were consumed last year, and 20 httve already been consumed in 1928, causing wholesale destruction by arson of buildings and a great loss of money.