STAGE MANAGED.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 18893, 7 January 1927, Page 9

STAGE MANAGED.

SOVIET SHOW PLACES

GULLIN'G OF BRITISH DELEGATION, (BT CASI.I—PBZSS ASSOCIATIOS—COPTF.IGHT.) (AUSTRALIAN' A.VD V.Z. CABLE ASSOCIATES.)

LONDON, Januarv o

The stage management of the Soviet's sham show places is exposed in a "Daily .Mail'' interview, backed with documentary evidence.

"With a Hartlepool sailor in the party, 70 peasant Russian families have arrived, en route for Canada, the forerunners of 13,000 families. An emotional thanksgiving service for deliverance from the wretchedness in Russia, and invoking blessings on England and Canada, was held aboard on arrival at Gravesend.

The Hartlepool man, whose narao is not disclosed, in order to avoid victimisation, was deported by the Soviet as a British spy. He was in hospital in Batoum in 1021, and married a Russian nurse, a farmer's daughter. The Cheka (secret police service) arrested him for entering the country without a permit, and compelled him, on a threat of exile, to become a propagandist, conducting foreigners to model clubs and factories, falsely asserting that they were typical. The Hartlepool man told visiting seamen that they could have similar clubs if they became revolutionaries. The hospitality was lavish, the majority of the Russian frequenters of the clubs being supers, repeating the deception daily. Two genuine workers who told the truth to Britons were executed.

The gulling of the British Trades Union delegation was a laughingstock throughout Russia. The Hartlepool sailor was imprisoned for telling British captains of the deception, but was released on the intervention of the British Charge d'Affaires.