PUBLIC OPINION

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20987, 14 December 1939, Page 11

PUBLIC OPINION

As expressed by correspondents whose letters are welcome, but for whose views we have no responsibility. Correspondents are requested to write in ink. It is essential that anonymous writers enclose their proper names as a guarantee of good faith. Unless this rule is complied with, their letters will not appear. RURAL HOUSING SCHEME (To the Editor) Sir, —Your correspondent Mr C. Davies, of Cambridge, is somewhat hasty in his condemnation of the rural housing scheme. His statement that the whole of the ratepayers are liable for the rates of those who have buildings erected under the scheme is erroneous. The position is that the land which is improved by buildings is rated for the improvement, not all and sundry as stated by your correspondent. Local bodies can be trusted to exercise caution in advances and not approve applications where it is obvious the burden is too great for the land to bear. The scheme is well worth a trial; experience will teach us its weaknesses.—l am, etc., R. G. YOUNG. Gordonton, December 12. LOAN FOR CONVENIENCES (To the Editor) Sir,—Surprise has been expressed at the rejection of this important loan proposal, and the reason for rejection has never been stated in cold print. The facts are that the Borough Council, after failing to carry a poll over the removal of Garden Place Hill throughout the borough, set up a special rating area comprising for the most part interested persons, and thereby carried a proposal in the teeth of the ratepayers’ veto. The excuse for this action was that the removal was to occasion no expense to the rest of the borough. Now, before the removal, the borough had two conveniences, one in Ward Street and the other in Garden Place. Both these have “gone west.” Any administration should have included among the obligations of the special rating area the duty of replacing these conveniences. Hence the rejection.—l am, etc., DON QUIXOTE. Hamilton, December 13. THE SILENCE OF STALIN (To the Editor) Sir, —The Paris Figaro has published an article in which is summarised the actual situation in Russia. The author, Boris Souvarine, called his work “The Silence of Stalin.” The following is taken from it:— “At present the budget of the ‘hunting banquet’ achieved by Stalin and his new assistants, Jesciov, Mekhlis and Beria Malenkow, who are called in Russia ‘The men without a biography,’ appears under the following aspect: All the members of the Central Committee of the party, and of political office, who were appointed during Lenin’s lifetime, with the exception maybe of three, have disappeared. The Commissioners of the People and the Joint Commissars pf eleven federated republics, in the proportion of nine out of ten, have disappeared.

“Five of the seven presidents of the Executive Committee of the Soviets have disappeared in active service. Six generals out of eight, members of the Council of War, which in turn last year condemned a marshal and seven generals to death, havedisappeared. About 75 members out pf 80 of the Higher Council of War (marshals, admirals, generals, comrnisars) and all the leaders of the military districts and squadron commanders have disappeared. Nine political army commissars and seven generals have disappeared. All the commissars of the State police force, which is to say, a commissar-general, six first-class commissars and 11 sec-ond-class commissars, have disappeared.

“Almost all the members of the Commission for the Soviet Constitution, called the most democratic in the world, have disappeared. Nearly all the economists, technicians and statesmen who put the Five Yeai Plan into execution, and particularly the leaders of industrial and agricultural enterprises, have disappeared. Ambassadors, plenipotentiary Ministers, consuls-general in very large numbers have disappeared. The managers and secondary agents of the so-called Communist International, who belonged to the old ranks, have almost entirely disappeared. Magistrates, professors, writers, journalists and artists, of whom no one has been able to make an exact list or an approximate calculation, have disappeared. “Finally, during this everlasting night of Saint Bartholomew, thousands, tens of thousands, of unknown persons and subordinates of the victims themselves have disappeared. Now then, if our local communists think Russia to be a heaven to live in, it would be better for them to go there, as this is a real God’s country.”—l am, etc., G.P. Hamilton, December 13.