MOSCOW SNUBS BERLIN

Waikato Times, Volume 105, Issue 17750, 29 June 1929, Page 14 (Supplement)

MOSCOW SNUBS BERLIN

MAY DAY INSULTS. RETORT TO PROTEST. (From a Correspondent). BERLIN, May 5. The Soviet Government has made the German Government eat humble pie. On May Day a model of the new German cruiser, with comic actors on board dressed to represent the German Chancellor (Herr Muller) and his colleagues, was one of the attractions of the Moscow procession reviewed by Voroshiloff, Commissar for tho Red Army.

The cruiser bore the inscription: “Eight million marks for armoured cruisers; not a pfennig for feeding children; bullets for the unemployed.” In his speech Voroshiloff, it was reported, spoke of the down-trodden proletariat of so-called democratic Germany, where the President of Police, like the former Czars of Russia, forbade the workers to demonstrate on May i.

In Petrograd a riotous crowd demonstrated against Germany outside the Consulate. The German Government ordered its Ambassador to protest to Moscow against this interference in German affairs. The reply was that the authentic text of the Commissar’s speech does not contain the passage complained of, and that the Petrograd demonstration must have been spontaneous.

To-day the organ of the German Chancellor slates: “The German Government is satisfied with this reply and considers the incident closed.”

Deliberately Arranged,

Ordinary Germans are not satisfied with the reply, and that moderate newspaper the Borsen-Courler to-day states that the Insults to Germany were deliberately arranged after a quarrel among the Soviet Commissars. Kalenin and Rykov, it says, were against the proposed insults to Germany, but Voroshiloff said that, as honorary president of the .German Red Front Fighters’ organisation, he would lose all credit with the Communists of Germany if, he did not condemn the action of the Berlin Police President. He added that, whatever happened, Germany would not dare to break djplomatio relations with tho Soviet during tho Paris Conference. It was finally arranged that no Commissar except Voroshiloff should appear at the May demonstration, and Stalin, the Soviet dictator, ordered him to attack Germany in his speech and to make caricatures of tho German Minister's figure In the procession,

All this the German Government knows perfectly well, of course, but Is prepared to humiliato itself to retain the favour of Moscow.