CAKES AND ALE

Hokitika Guardian, 1 February 1928, Page 1

CAKES AND ALE

Auckland Star.i Soviet officials in Russia have no sense of humour and very little knowledge of human nature. They take their .Marxian doctrines in such deadly earnest that they are pained and grieved when they discover that the proletariat for whose benefit these doctrines are propounded craves for diversions more immediate and more mundane. It is often so. When a philanthropic employer in England wished to promote a love of line arts amongst his work people, he gave them an afternoon off. and a shilling each, to go and see an exhibition of paintings by old masters. They told him they had enjoyed it very much. The employer was very pleased until he found that they had first sent in a deputation of two of them to the picture gallery, and when the deputation returned and said it was only a lot of musty old paintings, they had spent the remaining shillings in the cosy atmosphere of an inn parlour. Something of this sort would appear to have happened in Russia. The peasants, offered political lectures, demand public houses on the Western European model. The Soviet, in its bland and childlike belief in the desire of the peasantry to be uplifted, had founded village clubs for the purpose of enabling the peasants to meet together and he instructed in the advantages of Communist rule. They met together, hut instead of discussing the foreshadowed blessings tliey ordered drinks all round and swallowed things spirituous instead of the Afarxian doctrines propounded by their rulers. I hese peasants are probably qualifying tor

the intelligence test propounded in America by Air Doran. Hie majority of those who entered for this test in the States failed to answer a question ns to what they would do if they came upon a truck-load of Unreels of whisky