RUSSIAN AFFAIRS

Waipa Post, Volume 44, Issue 3178, 17 May 1932, Page 3

RUSSIAN AFFAIRS

STEPHEN LEACOCK'S COMMENT.

"The present danger to the world from Russia is not from the real Russia, but from a purely mythical and imaginary' Russia,? says Pro-i fessor Stephen Leacoek, in "Back to Prosperity." "In this Utopia, an imaginary group of noble fellows with unpronounceable names direct the labour of an imaginary band of brothers. In this fortunate land overproduction is unknown, unemployment has vanished. On the strength of this system vast industrial cities—a Stalingrad, a Cheliabinsk, an Uralasbest—rise triumphant in the Siberian solitude. This is the imaginary picture, that beckons like a will-o'-the-wisp floating over a marsh, to the unemployed, the distressed, the discontented; most of all does its light shine in the eyes of the young, fresh from their strenuous years at school and college—industrious, capable, equipped and finding as their outlook nothing but/the closed door, the empty sidewalk and the breadline of the unemployed. These young men have everything to give, brains, energy, industry; and in return they find—at this moment in this world — nothing. This will not do." "Thus does the man walking the sidewalk on worn shoe-leather and asking for a job, dream of a land of fair play and opportunity and calls it Russia,'" continues Professor Lea-

coek. "But if he knew the real truth, what would he see ? A vast country, half raw, half civilised, a country of shabby villages and mean streets, with mournful people dressed in the colours of an ash-barrel, waiting in long lines for their bread; a country where an organised group of bosses, with here and there a passionate idealist with a vision, impose their will upon ignorant and docile masses who have never known anything better than the role 'of a Zenghis Khan, or of Ivan the or the iron tyranny of the Romanoffs. In such a land over-production is unknown because there is not enough to eat; and unemployment; is as rare as it is in the penitentiary. The new Russian industrial centries are a wonderful tribute to the Americans who built them. They will function just as long as they are run by the Americans in the American way. "In a hundred years the Americans could do great things with Russia. But left to the courage of Communism the industrial cities will collapse along with jfce rest of the Communistic structure."