THE TYPICAL BOLSHEVIK.

Taranaki Daily News, 21 July 1919, Page 10

THE TYPICAL BOLSHEVIK.

RUSSIANS IN GERMANY. "VERY LIKE ANIMALS." CORRESPONDENT'S IMPRESSIONS. An illuminating description! of the Bolshevik element among the Russian prisoners of war ip the Lamsdorf prison camp is given uy Mr. Oliver Madox Hueffer. Of the 800,000 Russian's remaining in Germany he estimates that 90 per cent, are entirely uneducated. Making allowances for the bad effects on morale of four years' German prison life, Mr. Hueffer sees in the inhabitants of the Lamsdorf camp evidence of the existence in Russia of a low type of humanity, which is a peril to civilisation.

I had to come to Germany, he writes, to understand something about Bolshevism, and during the past few days I have learnt quite a lot about it and its causes. There are in Germany today more than 800,000 Russian prisoners, 50,000 or so in this part of it. The bulk are concentrated in prison camps, the remainder are kept at. work on "kommando" on farms, and in the coal mines.. I suppose I have been at more or less close quar.tera with 10,000 of them at Lamsdorf prison camp and elsewhere.

Something like 20 per cent, of these prisoners are officially declared to be professed Bolshevists and ar£ kept more or less segregated from, their companions. It is not too much to say that the remaining 80 per cent, are Bolshevik in everything but name. They have no respect for their officers, who for their part are frankly afraid of them.

It is, of course, scarcely fair to Judge of a man's capacity after he has been four years in the most stultifying state of captivity, but it is difficult to imagine that these men can ever have been very much superior to animals. Ninety per cent of them are totally uneducated; only a very small proportion appear to have any reasoning powers whatever. Their sole active desires appear to be to eat and to sleep; their sole motive a dull resentment against those who are keeping them in captivity.

RUSSIAN PRISONERS' GRIEVANCES. Each prison lager has a committee appointed by the prisoners themselves to represent their interests. These committees presumably include those who are the most intelligent, or at least the most prominent among them. I have been present at one or two interviews between such committees and the American Army officers, who are now administering the prison camps. They were always overflowing with grievances. They never attempted to controvert a fact, scarcely even to understand it. The conversation ran something like this:— "We are not given enough to eat." They were told that they were getting more food than the civilians of England and France received during several years of the war.

A pause as of deep reflection, followed by, "We are not given enough to eat." With what appeared to me superfluous patience the items of their daily fare were explained to them —120 grammes of meat per day, 20 of fat, 00 of tea a week, so much meal, so much hard, white bread for soup thickening. Another pause, and then, "We are not getting enough to eat. The German guards are getting as much as we are getting. You are feeding the German guards. This is very wrongi" It is gently but firmly hinted that the subject is exhausted.

MUTINOUS OVER A BATH. Their dislike to work is only equalled by their distaste for any kin<j.pf authority. One man, for instance, although suffering from violent toothache, refused to open hia mouth—because the doctor told him to do so.

It/is the same when it is a question of taking a bath. They have apparently no rooted antipathy towards bathing, but the institution of a weekly bath-day under the new Tegime produced the nearest thing to a mutiny possible to such listless faineants. When the first came round 20 of them flatly itfused to take off their clothes—because they were told that they must do so if they were to enter the water.

The Germans lacked the one possible weapon towards, disciplining asid improving the morale o£_ their prisoners—they always fed them* as badly aa possible and gave them no tobacco. "Their American successors feed them liberally, and extend the possibility of cigarettes as an incitement to virtue. And it works—as well as it would work with a young child or an intelligent dog. There never was. a more surprised or indignant party of Bolsheviks than were the bathing party when they discovered that, in consequence of the refusal of the 20 to undress, they were all to be deprived of the white bread for soup thickening for the ensuing .week. The whole lager reduced itself into an infinity of committees and passed endless resolutions condemning the brutality of their harsh American taskmasters. But when the next bathing day came round they showed a desperate unanimity in doing what they were told. Government through the stomach is supremely efficient in getting things done; it is. unfortunately, purely temporary in its effects. And, bo far as can lie seen, any appeal to their reason is hopeless. It is scarcely too much to say that of all the thousands I have seen in the last few days not one in twenty shows, facially, the ordinary signs of human intelligence.

LOW TYPE OF HUMANITY. To stand, as I have stood, amid a crowd of them, and to study their lowering brows and the dull, hopeless apathy of their eyes, is to receive the impression of standing in a herd of cattle. Much allowance must, of course, be made for the blighting effects of their long imprisonment; it is very difficult to believe that, even after good food, suitable exercise, skilled medical treatment, and audi educational influences as may be found possible, they can" ever be raised to anything like the level of average European intelligence. And these are but a sample of the people who have at present Russia under their heel and are threatening the whole of Central Europe. There are 800,000 of them in Germany now; there are 180,000,000 of them in Russia, a horde 1 beyond the dreams either of the ancient or the modern AttHa. And yet 'here are people who laugh' at the peril of Bolshevism!