DAY BY DAY.

Waikato Times, Volume 97, Issue 15270, 21 June 1923, Page 4

DAY BY DAY.

"Now Russia is a barbarous Asiatic

The Terror of Russia.

Power, practically expelled from Europe (for 'Russia in Europe' is not really

Europe), arid more given over Jo savage crime and fefbeious tyranny than even Turkey or

Persia in their worst days," writes Dean Inge in the Evening Standard. "This is the most frightful catastrophe that has ever overtaken a civilised nation. And It is the work, ultimately, of a few cranky economists in black coats. If Karl Marx, and others like him had never lived, Russia would have recovered easily from the war. It is Communism which has wrecked that once mighty empire. The great Napoleon, whose clear vision in such matters was seldom at fault, said: 'Though a nation were built of granite, the theories of economists would be enough to reduce it to powder.' We have an awful object-lesson before us of what may happen to a great nation which entrusts it's destinies to a. band of revolutionary fanatics. First come the half-crazy idealists; with their nostrums, tearing to pieces the delicate and complicated structure of civilisation, and offering to put it together again, as if they were dealing with a clock and not with a living organism. Then, when the machinery of law and order has been destroyed, the idealists ar'e thrust aside, and bloodthirsty criminals step into their places. They could not stop if they wished to do so. 'He who rides on a tiger can never dismount,' as a Chinese proverb says. We have at home thousands of persons—in Parliament, in literature, in the press, on town councils, in the universities, on the staffs of our State schools —who are Working incessantly to bring v about in England a revolution as disastrous as that which has destroyed Russia. And let us not forget that, whereas a simply organised nation like Russia, with unlimited natural resources, can recover quickly from an orgy of anarchy, ours is the most vulnerable nation in Europe, since we cannot feed ourselves, and depend for our very existence on foreign trade. If we ever fall, we shall fall like Lucifer, never to rise again. "We must hope that in this knowledge lies our safeguard against rash and ruinous political experiments."