THE ILL-USED SOVIET

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 515, 26 April 1933, Page 2

THE ILL-USED SOVIET

By its persecution of the Vickefs Company's engineers the Russian Government has incurred a fourfold disaster. The revelation of the Ogpu methods and the sham trial has shocked the conscience of the civilised world. The temporary diversion of the attention of the Russian people from the sins of its rulers must have resulted in a strong hostile reaction through their failure to satisfy the demand which they had encouraged for the death of the victims. The British embargo has destfoyed Russia's export trade to the value of £20,000,000, representing 30 per cent. of the total, and must aggravate the unprecedented distresses which were the principal cause of these, outrageous proceedings. Finally, there is a matter which, according to a message" from Riga is the most serious of all from the standpoint of the Russian Government. The greatest blow is the cessation of diplorruatic immunity, wliich was regarded as oue of the Soviet's greatest diplomatic accomplishments, and which Moscow did not realise would result from the la'pse of the trade agreement. In the results of its action, which how proves to have been as stupid as it was wicked, the Soviet needs all the sympathy that the Iarge-hearted Mr. Lansbury has on tap. He did not express any sympathy with its victims while their lives were in danger, but only with the independence of what he. regarded as a "Court of Justice." Was it with his handkerchief to his eyes, or with his tongue in his cheek, that he said in the speech a f. Rpf.forrl • —

Russia has not been treated as a sovereign State, but has been hullied into subjection. If everybody suffered from the softness of heart and head by which the Leader of the British Labour Party is distinguished, we should all be shedding tears, not for the indignities and the criielties to which six of our fel-low-subjects have had to submit for weeks, but for the humiliation of a sovereign State which was deterred from acting with the "justice" which it is accustomed to dispense to its own people. Instead of being allowed to shoot its victims out of hand, as it habitually does, the Ogpu has been "bullied" into sentencing two of them to imprisonment for terms of three years and two years respectively on no better evidence than that which had been extorted from them under torture. While others are mo'ved by the torture, the mock trial, and the imprisonment of ihnocent men, Mr. Lansbury reserves his tears for the humiliation of the sovereign State, which was not permitted to work its full will upon them, and his indignation for the Government, which, in, flagrant .disregard of the blessed principle of self-de-termination, has "bullied" it into stopping short of judicial murder. Mr. Lansbury's sincerity and tenderness of heart are not ; denied by the severest of his critics, but on, this occasion his wrong-headedness has been much more conspicuous. This humanitarian's protest against the resistance offered to Soviet cruelty was a startling illustration of the saying that extremes meet. If execution withput trial had not been a normal practice iii Soviet Russia, and if justice had been even the ostensible object' i of its^ coprts in such cases as ; f hisy Sir j ohn Simon as a lawyer I would Kave fou'nd it ihuch mbre difficult to interfere as he did, and might well have found Mr. Lansbury's objectiQir unanswercCble. But regdrding the first

point the practice of the Ogpu is notorious,; and on the second a_ man iri Mr. Lansbury's position has no excuse for ignoranee. ; Is it possible that the confessed "Claiss conscio'usness? of this extfaordinary tribunal has comr mended it to the. benevolence of Mr. Lansbury? In this as in almost every other respect it is abouf a's far remoyed from the British cohception of a Court" of Justice as could well be imagined, and the official declaration that it "does not differ in quaL ity from the Gheka" fully justi-i fies our' identifieatioh.of it wilh the Ogpu, which is the Cheka's ' successor. Such a tribunal was as .well qualified to do justice. fo a British subject as .a bench oi 'Ctecago' gaiigs'ters .under the presidency of the Mayor would h'ave been at the tiriie when "Big Bill" Thompson, • as: ihe holder of that office, was gallantly striying to keep King George's "shoot" out of Chicago.