LAND OF CONTRASTS

Taranaki Daily News, 26 February 1931, Page 5

LAND OF CONTRASTS

RUSSIA UNDER . COMMUNISM.

RELIGIOUS INSTINCT SURVIVES.

“It is a land of contrasts,” said Dr. William Wallace Rose, of Massachusetts, in a report to the Boston Ministers’ Association on a tour he made in Russia. "Everything that you say must be at once balanced by the opposite assertion. “If you say that some churches are destroyed, you must at once say that th 6 others are filled and crowded. If you say that churches are used as granaries or for other public purposes, you must also say that those, open are in better repair than before tiie revolution. If you say they are turning out .50,000 tractors, you must also say that most of the tractors will hot Work. If you say they have modern ideas of husbandry and even bathe their pigs, you must add that it costs a man a dollar to get a bath in a big hotel. If you say the worker gets sympathy, you must also say that there is no country where he needs so little pay. . He doesn’t have to worry about cost of schooling, sickness, old age, or lack of employment. If you say it is a land with no unemployment, you must also say it is a land where there is much terror. So also it. is a land of idealism, but also of brutality. It is a paradise for workers, but a hell for the rich, the .sensitive, the cultured and artistic. There is food enough, but sometimes people stand in queues to get it. If you say Russia Jias no money, you have to add that they have practically all the raw materials. Russia is the largest country in the world, making a great experiment, trying to lift the cultural level of mankind. One of the good things in the new system. is the elimination of the profit motive. We have been insisting that a man could not get along without a profit motive. The answer is that a whole generation of Russian boys and girls arc being taught that the possession of more mow/ than one needs is the crime of crimes and the sin of sins.

“Jt is clearly true that the priests are ■ persecuted, churches are heavily taxed, /the five-day week disrupts the order of services, the youth of Russia are being educated as atheists, the church is forbidden to teach religion to the .young, and every vital religious leader is quickly removed. frbm the scene. The Soviet Government, believing the church i-i an anachronism that could be rooted out easily, are now puzzled by the fact that the religious instinct survives. “The Russians are the new Puritans. They are exalting the virtures of diligence, thrift, abstinence. They set their faces sternly against drinking, against prostitution. Russia was the only great nation where we found no pornographic pictures, no prostitutes, no great drinking. 'lt is not Puritanism to them. It is just common sense to keep a man pure., temperate and efficient.”- ___