Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Over 50 Years.] SATURDAY, 23rd FEBRUARY, 1935. CHANGES IN RUSSIA.

Wairarapa Daily Times, 23 February 1935, Page 4

Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Over 50 Years.] SATURDAY, 23rd FEBRUARY, 1935. CHANGES IN RUSSIA.

President Roosevelt has admitted frankly that his policy is to try some plan, and, if it should fail, to admit the failure honestly and try something- else. That is a very real representation not only of the state of mind of the American people, but of a world unrest. It is questionable whether the universal demand.to “get something done,” in Mr Lloyd George’s phrase, and in far too much of a hurry, has not contributed a great deal to world confusion. Mere display has come to afford a satisfaction all of its own, just as speed is worshipped for its own sake. In a generation less given to trying to do a thousand things a’t once, we should surely have been able by this time to have acquired some just appreciation of the progress of the Bolshevik experiment in Russia. But either M. Stalin and his colleagues are as volatile in their administration as is Mr Roosevelt in his, or else propaganda is beginning to wear thin. About fifteen months ago the whole world was surprised when Washington suddenly invited M. Litvinoff to negotiate for recognition. In quick time, recognition was a fact. Then iate last year two more unexpected things happened. Russia came to terms with Japan for the sale of the North Manchurian railway, and with a magnificent political

somersault the Soviet joined the, League of Nations, stating- as a condition that there should be no questions asked about the past. Bread tickets and queues were abolished in Moscow overnight, the secret political police were declared disbanded, and Kirov, Stalin’s lieutenant, was assassinated by a band of Leninite reactionaries. A French critic (in the January “Contemporary Review”)

points out that the real explanation of the change coming over Russia is the resurrection of a purely national patriotism in spite of the Communists. The Soviet’s reaching out for certain imports on all sides shows that, de-< spite an advanced stage in the second Five Years Plan, Russia is still unable to produce the machinery and the railway rolling stock she wants. It is also. becomingclear that internal discontent is sufficiently serious to make the Soviet Government dread as much as any nation in Europe the possibility of war.