MIGHTY TRAGEDY

Hokitika Guardian, 12 October 1931, Page 3

MIGHTY TRAGEDY

PICTURE OF RUSSIA TO-DAY. CRUSHINC OF RELIGION. “Let there be no mistake abotit it — Russia is enslaved and she is suffering agonies. A real tragedy on a mighty scale is going forward under our eyes” said Miss M. E. Richmond, of Welling ton, in an address to the Social Progress League at Wellington last week. Miss Richmond, who is a student of international affairs, expressed the opinion that Russia was to-day a great spectacle and warning of the realities of applied Communism. “You will have seen in the newspapers,” Miss Richmond said, “how the Russians have sent us a quality of matches in hulk. You will have seen how they have imitated the New Zealand butter boxes, even to the trade, marks, so as to impose upon the English market. Such incidents tend to make peole here feel indignant, and quite naturally. But Russia is in extremis, she is driven to these things by the tremendous pressure of events. The Russian peasants are a lovable, peaceful people, conservative and fatalistic. Not so their present rulers. The Communists, who only number about three million, are, at the moment, governing about 45 million of their fellow countrymen by force.

FIERY PATRIOTS. “A hand of doctrinaires as full of faith in their, gospel as was the Holy Roman Church at the time of the Inquisition, have captured power and are quite l uthless in its exercise. There is no question but that they are filled with a fiery patriotism. The reason they are exporting and dumping theii goods in other countries is because they are faced with starvation. No good Communist woman expects her husband to kee her—she is to keep herself by her own manual labour. She is allowed a month or so off before and after the arrival of a baby, hut that is all. The Church, the home and private property must all go, and in some parts have already gone. Rut the young people are being educated by the State, child welfare centres are being established, great schools and technical colleges are being built many of the colleges being in direct touch with the factories and collectivist farms.

.MILITARY DISCIPLINE. “Russia is a country at war and the discipline is military,” Miss Richmond said. “One of the first tilings the ieyolutionarv Government did was to restore the death penalty. They speak of it as the last line of defence. Don’t make any mistake. Communists are idealists, and they are out to construct a new earth. Heaven they have abulised. They are out to do away with privilege and give everyone an equal chaince. Therefore every one must start at scratch theoretically—hut in practice the gifted the industrious, the intelligent, are cruelly and heavily handicapped to set them on the level of the lowest.

“The price of the progress Russia is certainly making is the slavery of the entire population. The reins of government have been seized b.v a few determined and ruthless men, and among these few Stalin reigns supreme. When he assumed power flier was a council of eight or nine persons; these have disappeared, and Stalin’s will is law. He rules with his life in his hands. He goes to work every day in an armoured car. Education, police, and the army are all under him, and everywhere the ‘slave mind’ is being cultivated, and obedience to orders is the supreme virtue. THE GOOD POINTS. “The good points seem to be, firstly everybody works; secondly, every individual works for the good of the whole, not for himself; thirdly, there i.-, no pleasure or happiness to be had except the inner satisfaction of work well done, if that is an advantage. Laziness is not permtted, luxury is unattainable, even common comfort is not to he had. So that while we AngloSaxoiis are debilitating our people by doles and cinemas and u liversal suffrage, Russia under a dictator is breeding a set of hardy, resolute patriots under military discipline. Wait ten years, and I see no reason why the Russian people should not rise up and possess the earth. Then the few the very few, will rule, and tije majority will serve.

“Stalin and company are as ruthles: as any of the conquerors of the past. Indeed, more ruthless—for they hold larger faith in the future, and their Ultimate goal is to redeem humanity. All doctrines a-e inhuman, and the more faith they have the more merciless they are. In Russia we see at the moment the greatest experiment in civilisation by conquest ever attempted by the human race: ;T))e Communists are out against hearth and heme ami family, against the Church, and every form of personal independence nd dignity, against all historical tradition and continuity. They mean to break with the past in order to create the future.

TWO RUSS!AS TO-DAY. “It seems there are two Russias to he thought of to-day.” Miss Richmond continued. “One the Russia of the Communist Government, the other the Russia of the mass of the people. At the Communists we must ga-?e in terror, and wonder that such widespread tyranny is possible to-day. At the

people, we must look with pity, and have ueep sympathy with their sorrows Many of them endure, with a, tragic patience, to the death. , “Idealism of this kind seated on the throne of power means for the proletariat .serfdom. But this is not the end. Let us pray something good may come of it all. Do not let us suppose those strange happenings are remote from us. Do not lot us imagine that matches are the only thing Russia is sending New Zealand. Russia is spreading ideas everywhere and always on the side of revolution. The rise and spread of these ideas can only be likened to the rise of Mohammedanism and it is equally dangrous to. Christian civilisation. But it has its good points and these must he recognised and frankly acknowledged. , tv “THERE IS NO GOD . '. .

“Religion is not so much neglected as extirpated,” she said. “The schools teach rank materialism. There is no God, nothing but this world. Humanity, as we know it, only remains, and all the’pnssion and power of individuals must be directed to its service. Boys and girls asked if they believed in God laughed heartily. It seems such an old-fashioned idea! In all print the great name is spelt w ith a small ‘g.’ Religion is not perishing through mere inaction, as some think it is with us; it is being brutally crushed and murdered. Only the Protestant sects show any vitality, and they are forbidden by law to.teach theirchildren, There are among us many advanced liberals who are out for Socialism, and ultimately, Communism. Therefore it is wise to learn what Communism means. “The Communists are grand propagandists; by fair means or foul tb v spread their doctrines everywhere. H we have any belief, if we have any faith, if we have any love for the present order, if we believe in Christian civilisation, we must understand a*>d realise the peril we are facing so that we mav stand fast in the faith.”