KERENSKY AND ROOSEVELT: THE EX-DICTATOR'S VIEW.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20332, 15 June 1934, Page 6

KERENSKY AND ROOSEVELT: THE EX-DICTATOR'S VIEW.

To-day’s Special Article

Moscow and Washington Analogous? The Weakness of Bolshevist Regitjie.

By

Philip Carr.

The real Kerensky laughed when he heard that President Roosevelt has been described as “a second Kerensky.” He received me in the office of the anti-Bolshevist journal which he has been conducting in Paris, but whose publication, he frankly confessed, is at present suspended for lack of capital. To produce such a paper and to smuggle it into Russia, as has been successfully done for a considerable time, costs money and can only be continued if there is a regular supply of enthusiasts of means, who will pay expenses; and that supply is for the moment exhausted, although I understand there is a good hope of its being revived.

(CONSEQUENTLY, although the office is in one of the most charming residential quarters of Passy, not a hundred yards from the house where Clemenceau died, it is a small office, up a narrow stairway in an old building, and the room and its furniture fully reach the standard of dustiness and dilapidation which any journalistic fittings which respect themselves should have. As he sat at the editorial desk, Kerensky, who had shown himself to be a man of rather less than medium height as he rose to greet me, presented a heavily lined and clean-shaven face, with strongly marked features, which would perhaps have suggested that of a monk if his grey hair, standing straight up on his head and cut short to that square outline which is now more common in Eastern Europe than it used to be in France, had not banished all idea of the tonsure, and if his eloquent eyes and the rather thick lips of his mobile mouth had not indicated emotions which were far from an ascetic control. He is now' past middle age. but neither physically nor intellectually has he lost his vigour, and the deep rich voice with which he speaks is still that of the great orator that he has been—did not Somerset Maugham declare the other day that the way in which Kerensky mastered and converted a hostile audience in Petrograd is the most outstanding memory of a remarkable personal achievement w’hich he can recall? Bolshevism and Suppression. Kerensky laughed when he learnt that the present Roosevelt Government had been compared with his own or that an attempt had been made to find any analogy between either the conscious aims or the unconscious tendencies of the United States of to-day and those of Russia in 11*17 14 My Government,” he said. 44 was struggling under war conditions, and that of two kinds—civil war and war against the foreign enemy; 4 for the Bolsheviks not only had the support of certain internal revolutionary forces, but that of the German General Staff. 44 Moreover, daring as some of the social and economic experiments already undertaken in the United States may be, the boldest visionaries there do not even con-

template the suppression of the political, social and personal liberties of citizens, whereas without the suppression of all three Bolshevism could not continue to exist. “ Again, the American experiments are directed to increasing the internal purchasing power of the mass of the nation. Bolshevism deliberately destroys it. In America, the whole movement tends to si .ve the farmer from ruin and restore the prestige of the agricultural interests. In Soviet Russia the whole movement tends to destrov the peasant. There is a chasm of difference between Bolshevism, which is destroying the whole economic structure and bringing Russia back to the chaos of the seventeenth century, and the American attempt to restore and revive economic life. No Napoleon Again. “It is on the economic side that the Russian revolution differs fundamentally, not only from what is going on in America, but from certain dictatorships in Europe. Italian Fascism for instance, although it has destroyed political liberty, has carefully refrained from destroying economic liberty. In fact, geographical comparison between revolutions are as misleading as historical comparisons. Nothing ever happens in the same way in one country as in another, or in the same way in one age as in another. Some people insist on comparing ©©©®©©©®®©©©®©©©®©©©©s

the Russian revolution with the French, and ask when its Napoleon will make his appearance. He will never make his appearance, for the Bolsheviks have destroyed or are destroying the forces which alone could give power to a Napoleon. 41 Is it realised that there are to-day two million political prisoners in Russia, mostlydistributed over the enormous wastes of Siberia; and although the mortality among these prisoners—consisting, be it remembered, of a large part of the most active and intelligent spirits of the country'—is enormous, the continuous flow of new arrests keeps the total at the same level. Compare this with the hundred thousand, at most, of political prisoners in Germany. Russia and France. 44 You ask me what I think of the present French leaning tow-ards co-operation with Russia. It is a very natural leaning; for in the first place France has alway’s sought Russian friendship in order that Germany’s eastern frontier may be watched, and is likely to seek it all the more to-day, when she is less sure of Poland fulfilling that function. 44 But let there be no mistake. Soviet Russia would, in the last resort, the resort to arms, be as broken a reed for France to rely upon against Germany as for the United States to rely upon against Japan. 44 As it is, the Soviet Government has yielded to every Japanese pressure in the Far East, whether it oq concerned with railways on land or fishing rights at sea. 44 It is not impossible for a revolutionary Government to create an army which may be a powerful instrument in internal repression and may even contain some remarkable technical developments—though I may say in passing that the Russian technical development in aviation is older than the revolution and even had . its origins before the w r ar. It is even possible that when the best fed, best drilled and best equipped units of such an army are concentrated in and around the capital, they may make, a strong impression. 44 But a vast country without an efficient system of roads and railways or the transport to use on them if they existed, without, reserves of food supplies or the possibility of creating them and without financial backing could not stand the test of

war unless a tremendous national sentiment and enthusiasm were behind the army; and that national sentiment has been killed bv the Bolsheviks, Of course, the value of a country as an ally does not consist exclusively in its capacity to make war; but if it is quite incapable of making war. as Russia now is, it cannot be relied upon to present much resistance diplomatically, and that accounts for the extreme pacifism of the Soviet Government in all its international dealings to-day. An Enormous Bluff. “ How and where will the system break down? Ah, that is a question impossible to answer. We are now in the springtime, and the peasant must be tempted to plough his fields and sow his corn. So he is being tc Id—as he is told every spring—that he will be allowed personal property in his harvest and in .his livestock. But the peasant no longer has any confidence. He has been killing off his cattle this winter, in spite of the decree which declares that it is his—the idea of property had so far been stamped out that Russia is now in the ironical position of seeing it reimposed by decree. He knows that the official announcements of a great harvest have turned out to be an enormous bluff. His faith is completely gone.’* (N.A.N.A.—Copj-right.) 3©©©©©©©©©©© B®®©®®©®®©®