The Wanganui Chronicle. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 16, 1947 RUSSIAN NON-CO-OPERATION

Wanganui Chronicle, 16 October 1947, Page 4

The Wanganui Chronicle. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 16, 1947 RUSSIAN NON-CO-OPERATION

Russian non-co-operation confined to the political field it would be possible to arrive at some excuse for such conduct. It would be assumed that a missionary zeal had possessed the Russian rulers who believed sincerely that their form of Government was the best and that it was only light to impose it upon whatever unenlightened people came within reach of forcible conversion. The conception would be Asiatic, but that would not be remarkable when dealing with the Russian of whom it is said “.Scratch a Russian find a Tartar.”

Unfortunately Russian unwillingness to co-operate with the outside world extends to even the smallest matters. For instance the refusal of the Soviet officials to allow Russian wives of British soldiers to join their husbands in Britain-is pure persecution which is not justified by subsequent legislation prohibiting Russion girls from marrying non-Russian nationals. Despite this con duet, however, —or perhaps because of it—the Russian press conducted a violent campaign concerning five, alleged Russian children who were kept as “like slaves” in the Klingengerg Orphanage, where they are foreed to become Roman Catholics and to forget the Russian language. The fact that members of the Soviet Reparations Commission were at all times free to visit the children was ignored and the natural desire of the British authorities to discover for sure whether the children did belong to Russia and had relatives there to take earc of them carried no weight. When Mr. Elliot Roosevelt interviewed Stalin the latter said that lie would welcome the exchange of cultural and scientific information between the U.S.A, and the U.S.S.R. Efforts made from the American side, however, invariably evoke no reply. Offers of n “tour” by the Boston Symphony Orchestra at its own expense: for building a penicillin plant in Russia and an exchange of medical scientists in this field: an invitation to Russian scholars to participate in the Princetown bicentennial; invitations to Soviet professors to lecture in America for the Rockfeller Foundation: to the Soviet Ballet Company from the Metropolitan Opera; to the conductor of the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra to be guest conductor at Boston evoked no replies. Requests have been sent by a Yale professor to be allowed to co-operate with Soviet geologists in research and by the Surgeon-General of the United States Public Health Service that American doctors be permitted to study Russian research medical methods. Again replies have not been vouchsafed by the Kremlin. The foregoing have been authenticated by General W. Bedell Smith, United States Ambassador in Moscow. Yet no explanation of any sort for such treatment, has been forthcoming from the Kremlin. It is obvious that in such an exchange the Soviet must stand to gain something that is of value. Yet there continues this her-mit-like attitude towards the United States. This being the ease it is to be asked what good purpose is served by New Zealand maintaining a Legation in Moscow? From the information that has com- out of that establishment all that has been accomplished has been the issuing of a few books and films, work that could be done, as a sideline activity by a railway bureau. It is reasonable to conclude that in Moscow the existence of New Zealand’s ambassador. diplomat, representative, charge d’affairs, or whatever Mi’. Bov.vell is designated there, passes entirely unnoticed. No good purpose is seemingly being served by his presence there and no good return is made to this country for the high expenditure on the New Zealand establishment in Moscow.