PEACE ONLY FOR CONQUEST.

Taranaki Daily News, 21 February 1920, Page 12

PEACE ONLY FOR CONQUEST.

BOLSHEVIK CRAFT, ARMY AS INSTRUMENT OF TERROR.' According to the Bolshevik organ Pravda the 'People's Commissary Gusell at a recent meeting of the Petrograd Soviet declared that, even if peace were concluded by the Soviet Government, it would not be a real peace, only a sort of as irreconcilable warfare between Bolshevism and Imperialism must continue unabated. "We must," lie said, "be prepared to maintain the strength of our armies. It is resting on the strength of our armed forces that the Bolshevik principles will be maintained at home and pleached abroad." This official declaration of the Soviet Commissary may serve as an answer to' the Russian writer Kuprin, who is now at Ilelsingfors, whither he fled from Gatchina to escape the Bolsheviks. Kuprin stated that Bolshevism was not a doctrine, but simply a method of government dependent upon strong, unscrupulous armed forces for its maintenance, and that if peace was made the Red Army-would be disbanded and Bolshevism would fall to pieces. But the last thing the Soviet Government would think of doing if peace were concluded would 'be to disband its army, would be kept u.p as an instrument of terrorism. The only aim of the Soviet leaders in demanding peace is to put an end to the blockade, which is rendering it more and 11101 e difficult to feed their army and hindering the extension of propaganda, in the outer world. To what extent the Bolsheviks holieve in the effects of propaganda may be judged by the statement in another Bolshevik organ, the Isvcstia, which calmly informs its readers that a deputation lias arrived at Samara from India stating that 300 millions in India wore ready to rise and throw (iff the British yoke and that the deputation had come to negotiate the conditions of joining the Bolshevik Republic of Russia. I