The Waikato Times. FRIDAY, APRIL 21, 1933. A SWIFT BLOW.

Waikato Times, Volume 113, Issue 18926, 21 April 1933, Page 4

The Waikato Times. FRIDAY, APRIL 21, 1933. A SWIFT BLOW.

The announcement of " ta'Mos^T Z the Vickers engineers who have stood then come with dramatic suddenness. No less prompt has been th action of the British Government m placing an i™me tlle per cent of the imports from Soviet Russia. If at any stage the Soviet considered that Britain was mere y g, ij traditional mildness, so contemptuonsly regarded m Russm would determine her attitude, then the bluff has been called, and the Soviet has found that Britain this time means what she has said.

Although the mildness of the sentences would argue that the Soviet realised Britain’s seriousness, and made a belated effoit to find a creditable exit from the trial, it is obvious that even a commutation of these sentences is scant compensation for the brutalities which the engineers suffered in the prison and in the court. Kussia may think it an easy matter to wipe out the incident with a stroke of the pen, but it will not be so easily forgotten in Britain, where for days the nation was keyed up to await every fresh development.

Following on the hysterical frenzy of the prosecutor’s attack, the sentences are illogical in the extreme. Had justice and law been the only considerations, it is clear that the prosecution Bhould have collapsed under its own weight and that the verdict should have been complete acquittal. On the other hand, if the . trial had been carried to a logichl conclusion, the political animosity manifested could have reaped no other reward than the extreme penalty. In its effort to preoccupy public attention at home with a sensational revelation of foreign espionage, the Soviet has cut a sorry figure. The fruit of its machinations lias been merely an ignominious oapitulation, and the British Government, now roused to action, has not yet finished. <

It has been suggested that the real cause of the situation is the failure of the Five Year Plan, and there are certainly grounds for assuming that the was an attempt to camouflage the deficiencies of Russian internal administration. A nation cannot go on indefinitely pursuing a policy which is absolutely uneconomic. Sooner or later a reckoning must come, and the longer it is delayed the more serious its consequences will, be. Russia has attempted to take everything and give nothing except seditious propaganda, and this one-sided policy is its own inevitable ruin.

It is not to be accepted that Russia has been friendless and alone, or, as some theorists even in New Zealand may regard her, as the only enlightened country striving against a vicious combine of the capitalistic nations determined to block her progress. The Russian social experiment has been watched with great interest, and prior to the arrest of the Vickers engineers there was a steadily growing feeling among the European Powers that the moderation of Russia’s attitude on the Far Eastern question entitled her to a place in the League of Nations, and to recognition as a responsible sovereign State.

Unfortunately an incident such as this destroys the good impression created. Civilised nations do not behave as Russia has done, nor do they treat the citizens of other nations with the brutality and fanatic animosity shown to the British engineers. Such treatment is a regrettable lapse into barbarism, and Russia must learn that her bureaucracy cannot be allowed to make international relations subject to the caprices of her fantastic internal policy.

Britain’s attitude has been consistent so far. It is to be hoped that having revealed the iron fist behind the glove, she will maintain her position until Russia is forced to a realisation that the tolerance she has been accorded in the past cannot be abused with impunity.