RUSSIAN TIMBER
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR:I SIR, —I take great exception to the statement in your corres- pondent's letter which appears in your issue of March 7th, where he says that the success of the Five Year Plan means the enslavement of the whole population of Russia, and the flooding of the world with slave-made goods ; also that every workman in England -will lose his job, and every employer his capital. Such sweeping generalizations as these destroy any possible value the letter might otherwise have had. "
To witness, as I have done, with what keenness the Russian workmen learn to manipulate their latest machines, and how enthusiastiC the peasants are over the arrival of a new tractor, is a sight ever to be remembered. All fair-minded People, who have visited Russia, will testify that the Russian workmen and peasants as a whole are eager and interested in their jobs, and as for the young people, their determination to do all in their power towards consummating the Five Year Plan is almost a religion with them.
Referring again to the much discussed Russian Timber Camps; nine-tenths of -the workers- are seasonal hands, many Of them coming up from their Villages with their own horses the task is no harder than that of lumber men in other northern latitudes. The pay, even taking into consideration the higher cost of living, is better than it was formerly ; the huts are strongly built, and, if anything, overheated— fuel being, of course, plentiful—and there are fairly well equipped forest hospitals, with competent medical attention, a thing unknown in these camps in pre-War Russia. Even if a small percentage of convict labour were employed, to write of the conditions in these timber camps in the way your correspondent has done is grotesque.
• It is those who are wasting their lives under the " dole " in this country, and the more serious cases who are not eligible for the " dole" and see no hope of getting a job, about whom our people should feel most concerned. Any attempt to an- tagonize a powerful neighbour and a great potential customer is doing England a cruel disservice, especially at a time when the appalling conditions in our industrial centres are causing widespread suffering and embitterment.
At the end of the present Five Year Plan there will be another similar one, and if they are successful in that also, it will most assuredly have a greater effect on the present economic life of the countries outside Russia, than anything else will. ' My view is that Russia's nation-wide co-operative experiment will in time drive the rest of the world into a few entirely self-contained areas, each possessing all the raw materials and other products for every human want and a population sufficiently large and educated and trained to make adequate use of these natural resources, the whole area being under one unified control. This is going to be the condition in Russia before many years are over, and Europe, with its multitudinous economic entities will find it impossible to carry on against the agricultural and industrial pressure that will be brought to bear from Russia, so the different nations of that continent will have to fall in line and become a federated United States.
The same will be true of the Far East. Japan cannot possibly exist with her own natural resources alone, no iron, wool, cotton, &c., so China and Japan will be compelled by force of circumstances to come together. The U.S.A. and the British Empire are already both self-contained, both as regards materials and population, but the future of the latter is already causing great anxiety because some of the component parts are showing signs of disintegration.
I would again emphasize most strongly that it is the bounden duty of us all to work against enmity and hatred between Great Britain and Russia with every means in our power, otherwise the men and women of the next generation will be unable to escape having to reap the harvest of another war which many well-meaning people of to-day are thought- lessly preparing.—I am, Sir, &c., HENRY E. MorcAtru.
Junior Carlton Club, Pall Mall, S.W. 1.
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