BRITISH PRISONERS FROM RUSSIA.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXVI, Issue 18162, 26 April 1921, Page 6

BRITISH PRISONERS FROM RUSSIA.

A little company of naval men I were welcomed in London a few days ago. Several of them have since talked with the King at Buckingham Palace. They were British prisoners released from Baku. One had kept a diary in captivity. Day - by day, laboriously, in a cheap account-book, with a lead pencil, he translated passages which struck his fancy in the Bolshevist organ, The Communist. These pasasges gives a vivid impression of life under the Bolshevist system. To a decree directing families and shopkeepers to contribute so many pairs of boots for use by the Red Army succeeds a proclamation against the “greedy aims of the parasites who are feeding on our blood —the English.” A paragraph records that the local theatre has been filled by the bourgeoisie. Red soldiers and workmen being unable to afford the “mad prices"—3oo Bolshevist roubles, perhaps 1 l-2d in English money—charged for seats. Another testifies to the change in the nature of prisons, which “are now institutions not of a punishing but exclusively of a correcting character," where “all those measures which can enable, enlarge and improve the soul of man” are introduced. The diarist, having been a prisoner himself, retains an opinion of his own on the point.