The Dominion. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 20, 1919. A GROWING PERIL

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 155, 26 March 1919, Page 6

The Dominion. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 20, 1919. A GROWING PERIL

There is sinister news to-day from Hungary. The new Hungarian Government, taking advantage of the disordered conditions in the Central Empires and in Poland, Russia, and the Balkan States, has set the Allies' .at defiance and declared for war. The evil influence of Bolshevism has been at work, and it would seem that yet another nation is to fall a victim to this epidemic of lawlessness and crime which is being spread throughout the world by Bolshevist agents and sympathisers. When Lenin and Trotsky seized the reins of power in Russia the Russian people were stricken with grief (millions had been killed in the war) and faced with starvation and economic ruin. They became an easy prey to the forces of lawlessness and disorder. And the outcome 'to-day in Russia is social, moral, and economic chaos. This Bolshevist Government has stirred a witch's cauldron and a poison philtre has been produced which is threatening the peace and security of the whole world. The end of the world war sees the nations faced with an evil which in some respects is even more terrible than the struggle which has just drawn to a close. The cablegrams day by day report that Bolshevism is spreading like a pestilence. It appeals to the predatory instincts of those with loose morals in every community. It has as its foundation a policy of confiscation and robbery, which is enforced by terrorism and violence accompanied by shameless injustice and abominable practices. Private property has been flung to the winds, and the old idea of the sacredncssof personality is ended in Russia. In the January number of Current History we read that the Soviet of the city of Vladimir has decreed that "a girl having' reached her eighteenth year is to be announced as the property of _ tho State," and having been registered she can be chosen "even without her consent" by any man from nineteen to fifty.

This foul system, whose praises are sung in some places in New Zealand, was made a few weeks ago the subject of an international poll in an influential weekly newspaper, The Outlook, of New York. Here are some of the judgments:—ExPresident T.wt said: "Their doctrines show by actual practice that the world belongs to the lowest proletariat, and that everybody with thrift, good clothes, and a clean shave and an. effort to make himself better should be killed." Milivjkoff, ex-Foreign Minister in Russia, said: "The Bolsheviki are in no wise representative of the Russian people. They are robbers and cut-throats; mad dogs who wish to bite others so that nil may be mad." Another witness, out of many, may be cited. Dn. Siaioxs, who for eleven years was a Petrograd minister of five Episcopal Church, informed Pdesident Wilson that "Bolshevism was avowedly anti-Ally, antihumanitarian, anti-Christian, antiRussian. Consider it the greatest menace to the world peace, World democracy, civilisation and sanctity of home. Therefore, must earnestly hope Peace. Conference will not pollute itself by recognising Russia's greatest foe." These witnesses sec in Bolshevism nothing less than an epidemic of vice—an appalling feature of Bolshevism in Russia is the administration of justice. Government by massacre seems often to have been the order of the day. In the Nineteenth Century and After for January there is an article on the Bolshevik and His Prisoners, in which the writer tells his own terrible experiences as recently as August last. He was apprehended in Petrograd and flung into prison without trial. His guards acted like incarnate fiends. He was thrown into a room with twenty beds and no bedding, and about a hundred people. It was filthy beyond description and infested with vermin. Starvation was meted out. to the prisoners, who were clubbed by ,the Red Guards! with their rifles and knocked senseless. After six weeks of a living death, the Bolsheviki having po accusation against this man, he got out of prison. He closes his harrowing tale, told in this journal of high repute, by saying: "I pray God England may be kept from the blighting and monstrous inhumanities, tlia murders and robberies of the travesty of a system known as Bolshevism, which is really Socialism run mad." The Allies to-day are confronted with the fact that their plans for world peace are endangered by the growing influence of this evil thing which is spreading from cast to west through Europe. _ It is imnossible to believe that this danger has not been foreseen or that no measures have been taken to meet an emergency such as that which has now arisen. It is obvious, however, that the evils of Bolshevism will not be. confined to the land that has bred this foul danger, but that it is a growing peril to the peace and security of fcho whole world.