SOCIALISTIC IDEAS

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 80, 30 December 1919, Page 5

SOCIALISTIC IDEAS

DISINTEGRATION OF OLD SYSTEMS

TERRIBLE CONDITIONS IN CENTRAL EUROPE

(By Telegrjipli-Pi'css Association-Copyright London, December 25. "Advanced Socialistic ideas aro coming down from the East, right over Europe," is tho striking sentence in which' Mr. Peacock, tho Sydney "Sim's" special commissioner (now in Moscow), sums up tho results of his inquiries in Central Europe. It is impossible, he says, for those at a distance to realise the extent 'of the breakage and disintegration of the old systems or the agony of their death. It is inevitable that new forms will aris?. The beaten nations will not repeat the systems which have brought them to ruin. Bolshevism is merely tho Kussian .-ncf'liod. Poland, Goinwiiy, and Hungary are following constitutional means towards the same end. Mr. Peacock draws n terrible picture of the privations from cold, hunger, and disease in Central Europe—of wraithlike, gaunt-eyed children, and shellshocked' soldiers begging in the streets, and overworked, thin women. He thinks things are working towards a crisis rather than a solution. The cost of living has advnnccd enormously. It is a rare thing to find a middle-class family left with am- savings. Manufacturers are doing little, and find that tho jumping wages, which, change ovory three months,' are preventing quotations for business, whilst tho scarcity of materials is great. Mr. I.'encoclc concludes that the Germans as a Whole have no sehso of war guilt, but rather a sense of dismayed disappointment and self-Wnmo for their foolishness. Germany still insists that England is waging an economic industrial light in order to wreck her, whilst sho associates militaristic and territorial am'birioiifl and activities with France.

Xoiirlv dm whole of Eurore is short of food," fuel, iinrt clothing, iuid disruption has lirouglit overywliaro sadness, <lis<wo. ill-lienltli, and sourness.— Aug.N.Z. Cubic Af.sn.