RUSSIA DISTURBED

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 900, 18 February 1930, Page 9

RUSSIA DISTURBED

SERGIUS INTERVIEW DOUBTED BAN ON CHURCH’S PROTEST Times Cable. LONDON, Monday. The Riga correspondent of “The Times” reports that according to news from Moscow the protests of the Pope and the Archbishops of Canterbury and York against the persecution of Christians in Russia have profundly disturbed the Soviet. However, apart from the outburst Of the President, Rykoff, this had not been publicly expressed until the publication of an interview with the Metropolitan Sergius, Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. The phraseology used in that interview. says the correspondent, ■was so similar to ordinary Communist propaganda that its genuineness is doubted. PROMISE OF SUPPORT It is recalled that Sergius and other high ecclesiastic were sentenced to lengthy terms of imprisonment. Sergius was liberated in 1927, when he publicly declared his promise to support the Soviet. Archbishop John, head of the Latvian Orthodox Church, formerly a bishop in Russia, says he regards Sergius’s declaration as of very doubtful authenticity. What Sergius really said is difficult to tell, but it could not have been what was ascribed to him. It was notable that in spite of the widespread destruction of monasteries and bells, the burning of thousands of ikons, and the closing of churches, which must have wounded the souls of orthodox Russians, not a single protest has been permitted to appear in the newspapers. “DRAMATIC REPLY” The “Daily Herald” describes the Sergius interview as a dramatic and unequivocal reply to the stories of religious persecution published in the papers. The Moscow correspondent of the “Herald” says the Bolsheviks are very sensitive when an outside Power interferes in their domestic affairs.

A British or other foreign demarche would only provoke a rejoinder like that of Litvinoff in connection with Manchuria. The Russians recall that the against the execution of the prelate, Butkevitch, in 1923, served as a preliminary for the Curzon ultimatum. They ask whether religion is not being exploited in order to stir up anti-Russian feeling in Britain. In the meanwhile, the Russians say, the British campaign, recent events in Paris and Berlin, and the rupture with Mexico under the influence of the United States, are all augmenting a new war scare. AWAITING FACTS HENDERSON WILL NOT BE DRAWN QUESTIONS IN COMMONS British Official Wireless Reed. 11.10 a.m. RUGBY, Monday. Mr. Arthur Henderson, the Foreign Secretary, was asked in the House of Commons whether he had yet raised with the Soviet Ambassador the question of religious persecution in Russia. Mr. Henderson replied: “Before I raise such a subject I will have to do my best to ascertain the facts.” Mr. Henderson added that he had as yet received only a preliminary dispatch from the British Ambassador at Moscow. The ambassador, however, was furnishing him with a report in the near future. Answering further questions, he said: “It must be perfectly obvious that I cannot commit myself to any course of action until I have received the report.”