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"A feeling of calm assurance and a supreme confidence in the ultimate success of their experiment is the dominant note expressed by the Russian people at the present time," declared Mr. Paxton Hibben, journalist and student of government, in addressing the members of the Liberal Club yesterday afternoon. The speaker who returned two months ago from a long stay in the Slavic country, has observed the progress of the Soviet government from the late days of the Revolution, and is one of the most accurately informed of the foreigners who have witnessed the events leading up to the establishment of the present from of control.
"Since the war," continued Mr. Hibben, "there has been a steadily increasing disillusionment in the parliamentary or democratic type of government. In the countries of Southern Europe and particularly in Italy, it has been discredited and made ridiculous. But if Mussolinidies, or, what is more likely, one of his dissatisfied compatriots disposes of him by the simple expedient of murder, what comes next? There are only two kinds of self renewing governments that we know of today,--the parliamentary and the "dictatorship by the proletariat" type in effect in Russia and so-termed by its members. The first is in discredit and the second has already proved itself to be the upward path.
French Leading Poland Astray
"In entering Russia through Poland on my last visit," continued the speaker, in taking up the international policy of the Soviet, "I observed a condition on the frontier which seemed to me symbolic of the attitude of the Russians toward their neighbors. Poland, under the tutelage of France, is a highly militaristic nation overrun by soldiers and bristling with fortifications,--bought with money loaned to them by you and I for the most part, to repair the ravages wrought by other countries in the war. The towns and villages still lie in ruins, but along the entire Poland frontier stretch miles of costly barb wire entanglements through a narrow gap in which the train runs. The Polish side is guarded by a regiment of well uniformed soldiers with their lip sticks and rouged cheeks while on the Russian side there is merely a large wooded arch inscribed with the words Communism destroys frontiers.
"Russia's renouncing of all rights in the little country of Esthonia, and the declaration of the crarist treaty with Great Britain to divide Persia between the two countries as void, are typical examples of the spirit of justice and brotherhood embodied in the foreign policy. This mode of action is a real advance and not nearly so nebulous as the League of Nations or the World Court. The same spirit has been exhibited toward Turkey in the action of the Soviet, in leaving the choice of mandatory or occupation up to Turkey and the small Mohammedan countries. I am by no means certain that it was not Russia desire for Constantinople and the Straits in 1914 which was the underlying cause of the whole war.
Rounmata and Poland today hold large strips of white Russia by torce, which after five years of trouble they would gladly return to the Russians. The Romanians have resorted to a depouplation of the territory which they held by the simple means of murder. Russia has been handicapped in the international competition of diplomacy. Every respect able country has tried to discredit the Revolution and yet Russia has managed to carry has experiment to a successful stair.
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