GREAT BRITAIN: Red Slaves

Scene: The House of Lords.

Dramatis Personae: Viscount Brentford (carrying a cake of soap), the Bishop of Durham, Lords Ponsonby, Hailsham, Newton, etc., etc.

Time: last week.

Viscount Brentford, famed as Sir William (“Jix”) Joynson-Hicks during his Mrs. Grundyish term as Home Secretary (1924-29). with emotion:

“This cake of soap is morally unclean!” (displaying it). ”Such cakes are selling in London today 1½ each—a price which British producers find utterly impossible to meet. They are made in Russia,” (pause) “under conditions which violate the standards of the world! . . . The appalling conditions of slave labor there, . . . the horrors perpetrated there, are greater than any known in modern times!”

The Bishop of Durham, rising from the bench of the Lords Spiritual: “I demand that the Government take action to disassociate the Empire from the abominable proceedings now unquestionably going on in Russia!

”Why is it that the British trade unions have been so slow to manifest any kind of sympathy with their fellow-workmen in Russia? Their indifference is a shocking example of the blinding effect of class bias on the great mass of the people. . . .”

Baron Newton, retired diplomat and Major in the Imperial Yeomanry:

”We have papers proving that every citizen of the Soviet Republic who is not a military conscript is an industrial conscript. . . .

“The Russian Government is always preaching war and preparedness, pretending that some unnamed enemy is meditating an attack. Their Government lawyers at the recent interventionist trial in Moscow had the brazen impudence to contend that the British General Staff was planning to attack Russia!

”I do not believe that the Russians are fools. There must be some deliberate purpose behind the armaments they are preparing. Some day these enormous forces will be utilized. Then those believing in the pacific aims of the Soviet Government will have a rude awakening.”

Baron Ponsonby, rising to defend the MacDonald Government, demanded of the Bishop of Durham, 67, and of Lord Newton, 74, whether in 1908 they “denounced the British Government then in power for remaining silent when the report to the Russian Duma gave authentic details of cruelty under the Tsarist Regime? . . . Evidence in the present situation is much more vague and unreliable than in 1908. . . . We have grave suspicions concerning labor conditions in Russia. . . .”

Several Conservative Peers, leaping to their feet in consternation, interrupting Lord Ponsonby with questions:

“Did I hear aright?”

“Did he employ the term ‘grave suspicions’?”

“Grave suspicions!”

“Scandalous!”

Baron Ponsonby: “I may have said ‘grave suspicions,’ but in any event you cannot legislate on suspicions. During the last year His Majesty’s Government has done more toward bringing about an amicable spirit in Europe than had been done before in many years. One of the elements which we consider necessary for this peace is to bring Russia within the comity of nations. Therefore I very much regret that these occasions are taken constantly to make insulting remarks about a government with which we officially are on friendly terms.”

Viscount Hailsham, rising to get the last word in the debate for his party (Conservative): “I doubt if there has ever been made in this House a speech more equivocal, inconsistent, unsatisfactory and deliberately evasive as that just delivered by Lord Ponsonby!”

Blue Book, A collection of Soviet decrees, presumably gathered in Russia by the British Embassy, has been published as a “Blue Book” entitled Russia, No. 1 1931 by the MacDonald government.

It contains no information about “prison camps.” It does tell much concerning the extraordinary powers which the Soviet State unquestionably exercises over all Russian labor. For example the Soviet de cree of Oct. 9, 1930 ordered “immediate despatch of all unemployed to work and the cessation of unemployment benefits. . . . The unemployed are to be drafted not only for work in their own trades but to other work. . . . No excuse for refusal to work, with the exception of illness, sup ported by a medical certificate, should be considered.” In other words martial-industrial law.

In Moscow last week the Commissariat for Labor took action against two Russian engineers who had refused to do work as signed them in the Siberian Kuznetsk coal fields. It was decreed that no one in Russia shall employ these “deserters” for the next six months, and that their food cards be canceled. If they do not starve to death clandestine charity will be to blame. In the Soviet mind, Russia is now fighting an ”economic war,” and it is pointed out that in other kinds of wars deserters are shot. Thus, Moscovites argue, the Soviet State is “more merciful” than are capitalist States.