RUSSIA: $5 for Cartridges

Russian emigres in the U. S. and Europe received last week by post this stirring appeal: “Russia is not lost! The Soviet power is coming to an end. The factories are closing down. The Soviet economic structure is held together only by the support of German Jews, lying propaganda and finally by our criminal laziness. World events of recent days have made it possible to begin the formation of a Russian army in Shanghai. This exceptional historical fact must be utilized in full measure. Cut to the minimum your expenses, your holiday purchases. Send money in cash or pledge slips in the attached envelope addressed to General Dietrichs, 154 Route Pere Robert, Shanghai, China. . . .

“Down with lectures, discussions, parties and poetry! Down with concerts, balls, banquets and dinners! Give money to the Russian army. Each $5 is 100 cartridges for Russian guns. Each $5 is 100 shots between the eyes of the Yiddish robbers. Each shot on the boundary of Manchuria is a signal for the uprising of the Russian people in Russia, a signal for the arousing of the Russians in France, Serbia, Bulgaria, a signal for the end of the Yiddish yoke.”

Mobilization? Though Washington does not officially recognize Moscow, the Hoover Administration permits a Soviet Russian Information Bureau to flourish in a modest red brick house on Massachusetts Avenue, within a mile of the White House. Chief of this Bureau is Boris E. Skvirsky. Last week Comrade Skvirsky rushed around to the U. S. State Department, was received with all courtesy by Chief of the Eastern European Division Robert F. Kelley. Hotly Comrade Skvirsky demanded that the U. S. mails be closed to appeals for money wherewith to fight the Soviet Union. Soothingly Mr. Kelley promised to “turn the whole matter over to the Post Office Department.”

Two days later Moscow glowed with satisfaction over an article by Soviet Publicist Karl Radek in which he strongly hinted that the U. S. would assist Russia should Japan attack the Soviet Union. In Washington the State Department, perturbed, tried to make a distinction between the courteous reception accorded Comrade Skvirsky and an official reception.

“He was received,” said Receiver Kelley, “just as would be any private individual representing an informational or trade organization.*”

In Berlin radio listeners picked up a startling broadcast from the Moscow station of the Communist International or Comintern. In Russian the Comintern broadcast an order from the Soviet Revolutionary War Council calling to the colors simultaneously, for the first time since the Russo-Polish War of 1921, four classes of recruits (youths born in 1909, 1910, 1911, 1912). The order announced mobilization East of the Ural mountains of a total of 800,000 men for “maneuvers.” This would mean sending a force three times larger than the regular U. S. Army from European Russia into Asiatic Russia.

Moscow correspondents, working under the usual Soviet censorship, cabled official Soviet denials of this monster mobilization. They were permitted to cable also that Josef Stalin has cancelled an intended vacation on the “Russian Riviera” (the Crimea), will remain at his desk in the Kremlin Fortress. No “German Jew,” no “Yiddish robber,” Dictator Stalin is a pure-blooded Georgian (Asiatic Russian) who spent his youth industriously robbing Tsarist officials, turned over the proceeds to the late, great LENIN, also no Jew but a 100% European Russian. Comrade Skvirsky of Washington is a Jew from Odessa, famed Black Sea post, was in Australia when the Russian Revolution broke, hurried home.

Jewish Paradise, Moscow Correspondent Louis Fischer of The Nation produced last week a symposium of benefits enjoyed by Jews in present day Russia, recalled that 15,000 Jews are permitted to remain “capitalists” and officially registered as such in the Soviet Union.

“Jews manage huge state farms, guide the work of oil refineries, run railroads, lay highways and manage plants,” wrote Mr. Fischer. “Jewish engineers, Jewish agronomists and Jewish technicians are issuing from Soviet universities in thousands. Magnitogorsk and Kuznetskstroy. two Soviet ‘supergiants’ [of the Five-Year Plan] are being built under the guidance of Jews. . . .

“The Bolsheviks condemn antiSemitism. … No door in the Soviet Union is closed to Jews and none could be. . . Far from discriminating against Jews tl Soviet Government has been known to discriminate in favor of Jews. . . The revolution promises to bring prosperity to vast numbers of Jews. . . . Intermarriage [between Jew and non-Jew] takes place on a large scale. … In thick Jewish settlements . . . courts are conducted in Yiddish and the testimony of non-Jews is translated into that tongue.

“The Bolsheviks are at pains to encourage all forms of Jewish culture.”

*Washingtonians who have become thoroughly accustomed to having Comrade Skvirsky around during the past eleven years are apt to speak of him as the “Soviet Ambassador.” When thus addressed he is not displeased, bides his time until the day when the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, embracing one sixth of the world, will have a real instead of a sub rosa Ambassador in Washington.