The Daily News WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1930. A WORLD MENACE.

Taranaki Daily News, 19 November 1930, Page 6

The Daily News WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1930. A WORLD MENACE.

It is well known that the Germans have almost made a fetish, of “culture,” though they have been credited with far more enthusiasm over making it a means for their own ' aggrandisement than for the uplift of the > world at large. Apparently they have found a new avenue of activity in the formation of a German League for the Defence of Western Culture. According to the Berlin correspondent of the London Times, this league recently organised a gigantic anti-bolshe-vik demonstration, in which Sir William Horwood and prominent leaders of all religions took part. There are, of course, two or more ways of regarding Soviet aims for a world-wide revolutionary campaign, but it is only necessary to bear in mind'the oft repeated proclamations of Soviet intentions in order to appreciate such a movement as that now being made by the German league. Nothing but common action against a common enemy nan be of service to the world. Beyond all doubt there is certainly method in Soviet madness, and it would seem that the crux of that method is to be found in the way the Russian people are being treated. The worker is being made to feel that he belongs to a ruling class, and that he has his heel on the neck of the bourgeoisie who once dominated, and that is gratifying the sadistic instinct common to humanity. Increasingly the highest industrial, political and administrative positions are being thrown open to him by a deliberate policy aimed at reducing the influence of the “intelligentsia,” however pure its Communist history, and increasing that of the manual worker. Every instrument of propaganda is brought to bear on the workers to persuade them that they are the principal architects of the new Russia, and that the new Russia is the chosen people for the creation of a new society, which is to emancipate the world. Above all they are told that their immediate sufferings are necessary, inevitable, and temporary, and that they will pass away in a few years, when the present stage of a vast process of world reconstruction and transformation is completed. Even these specious appeals to the down-trodden proletariat are as nothing compared with the subtle indoctrination of the pernicious theory, that capital must be obtained by creating a surplus inside Russia, a process that can only bear fruit by cutting down consumption to the minimum, so that the people must go short of tobacco, sugar, eggs, butter, cotton, wool, leather and other articles in order to increase exports and pay for the indispensable imports of machinery and raw materials. Such is the mirage of a golden future held lip- to the workers as the reward of a hard present. In other words, the workers are to become the slaves of the Soviets and* live on the prospects of future glory—for their taskmasters. In reality these people are being made to pander to the ambitions of the Soviet autocrats, whose main obsession is to obtain all the money possible from outside, ostensibly fox* the purpose of promoting the prosperity of the country and the workers, but really for the propaganda of revolutionary doctrines throughout the world. No wonder thftt Sir William Horwood appealed fervently to all nations and creeds to combine in a crusade to stamp out the common enemy. No more striking illustration of the Soviets’ duplicity can be observed than that recently presented by Litvinoff in discussing disarmament at Geneva while at the same time the Soviets were indulging in a monster agitation to make the masses ready for war against the. capitalist enemy—a wax* that is to he waged relentlessly with the most modern torture and death-dealing weapons provided by science. For such a struggle agitators are said to be 'Ticouraging the workers to coxx-

tribute overtime payment foxstrengthening the Red army, especially through th? building of aircraft. The nature ol the Soviet propaganda is too well known to need recapitulation, it being calculated to inflame those who have nothing to lose and possibly something to gain by revolutionary tactics. That the danger is real must not be ignored. Rather is it so patent that it has become all too familiar. History has a way of repeating itself unless its lessons are taken to heart and the necessary means adopted to prevent upheavals. If. is certainly wise to treat the Soviet menace as a reality, hence the advisability of all nations combining for their preservation from the machinations of the Moscow Reds.