PETROGRAD TO-DAY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2126, 11 May 1920, Page 4

PETROGRAD TO-DAY.

IST THE GRIP OF FATALISM. “Piermurini,” the correspondent of the London Evening News, who, at great personal risk, penetrated into Red Russia, and saw the workings of Bolshevism on the spot, describes in his fourth article the two aspects of life in Potrograd—the brilliant sham and the grim reality. He says;— The theatres are full. Yes, but for the thousand privileged citizens who spend a pleasant evening, millions are suffering and starving. A visit to the suburban part of the city inhabited by workmen, or. still more, an excursion to the country close to Petrograd, provides the most striking contrast to the still brilliant capital. This false brilliance is htrgely due to the fact that Russia’s wealth is now in the hands of the chiefs of the Bolshevist movement —and they have not even the tact to hide from the great public how they squander the riches they have-gained at the price of the ruin of their motherland, - :w a ,At uf all the sights of Petrograd, the one that impressed me the most was the number of funerals and of palaces transformed into hospitals. Religious funerals have been abolished in Russia; but- when one of the funeral cars passes along one invariably sees mixed up with the few followers a bearded man in civilian clothes marching at the back of the collln. Ho is the priest, who, without sacred garments or ikons, takes to the place of rest one of the numberless victims of the typhus epide-

But the largest part of the victims'an 1 carried away in lorries, cither from hospitals or from the private houses in the popular suburbs, where famine, dirt, and lack of hygiene arc more evident and tragic. This is the real" reverse of the ‘‘olllciar Petrograd. of the Nevsky Prospect, and of the spacious central squares, this is the real grim lace of Russia under Red Rule. The very value of the word Death is changed. Indeed now the whole of Russia lias a mentality very much like the one that possessed us who fought in the wur when we were in the most advanced trenches, and in our most savage moments. Eat. the whole ration, for in an hour’s time a shell .will have possibly blown you lo bits. Look, with dry eyes on the scattered remains of a ‘‘pal,” for that possibly may be your fate, too! Russia is in the grip of Fatalism, as we were. This, I believe, to be the real reason of all 1 he disasters (o the armies of Kolteliak, Judenitch, mul Denekin. I firmly believe that, in spite of simplified history, every Russian labourer who has to Avork and struggle for his dinner and is not getting it out of his new place in the Soviet Republic, lias long ago realised that it would have been incomparably heller to stick (A the old system, with all its faults, and that the new masters are a thousand limes worse than the old ones.