CONDITIONS OF HORRORS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 2820, 6 December 1924, Page 4

CONDITIONS OF HORRORS.

WOMEN AND CHILDREN UNDER BOLSHEVISM. As there exists in New Zealand a number of people who are indued a numbed of people who are inclined and who wish to see the workers linked up with Bolshevist power of Moscow,,we think it. well to set out plainly what bolshevism has done for the unfortunate women and children who have come under its tyrannical sway in Russia. Sir Pereival Phillips, the famous war correspondent says:—

“Under Bolshevism women are of less value than cattle, and are treated accordingly. Marriage is easier than the purchase of a broadcasting licence, and can be dissolved by a “husband” taking his “wife” before a local official and there discarding her.. .. .Abortion has been legalised. Any doctor is permitted to perform an illegal operation if the patient says she is unable to support a child. Women were ‘nationalised’ in the early days of the Red Dictatorship. Trotsky abandoned ‘open nationalisation' as a policy which was ‘too advanced' but the system has been followed secretly in some of the larger towns. “Voneral disease is widely prevalent among children of both sexes. Tn Moscow the number of boys and girls from twelve to sixteen years of age who have been taken to isolation hospitals is so great that AT. Lnnarchsky, the prime organiser of Communist children's centres, has abandoned his work in despair.” “Women who cannot find employment owing to the industrial stagmil ion are driven on the streets in large numbers. Bolshevist officialism from the head officials in the Kremlin tp the lowest bureaucrat, boast (hat destitution has driven the members of aristocratic families into their arms. . . . “Other

women, who have not entered the charmed circle of the lied aristocracy, starve slowly in Moscow garrets. Bolshevism promised them ‘emancipation’ from the restrictions of ordinary life. It has given them rags, hunger, disease, and the abolition of all family tics. Homilife has no place there. Children belong to the State and women arc the servants of all.” PATE OF THE CHILDREN. In the official paper, “Pravda,” August 24th., 1024, Rykolf, chairman of the Council of Commits*!vs, is reported as saving:—“During the famine of 1921 a great number of children were collected in the stricken areas and placed in special homes all over the territory of the Republic. Some of these, children have already grown up and left the homes. They have not been taught, anything; they do not know how to work; they are useless in agriculture and in industry. “The children’s homes create tramps who do not know what work is. In future they will be a burden to the State. This must stop.” “When the experiment was proved to be a ghastly failure, the Soviet Government brutally turned thousands of unfortunate children into tlie streets to beg, steal <>r starve. The actual number otf those perished will never be known, though the Soviet Government admits (bat no fewer than 6,000 wore frozen tn death in Moscow and Petiograd during last winter.” Such arc the tragic conditions that socialists in even fiappy New Z;.aland are disposed to gloss over and ignore in their yearning after a united front of Socialism. The people of our Empire must lie alive to all encroachments of Bolshevist thought in face of such terrible dangers. (Contributed by the N.Z. Weltare League.)