Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-06-01
III LIBRARY. TABLE
Ry the Bookiorer

the New York Times, give a measure OF
enlightenment to those whose opinions
about Russia are badly confused or de-
liberately held in suspense. OF course
the authors reach no definite and final
conclusions. II they did. they would be
either partisan or omniscient. The books
are The Curious Lottery" by Walter
Duranty, and The Hammer and the
Scythe,' by Anne O.Hare Mccormick.
III her preface Mrs. Mccormick dis
claims passing judgment on the Russia
of today: Nothing in Russia is fixed
enough to hang a Judgment on. +"
One Summer in Russia is, of course.
nothing, but 10 Summers would be no
more: the first guess is almost as good
as the last" And in her first chapter
she says; whoever goes to Russia dis
covers a different Russia. . For
Russia becomes wagner and darker the
nearer you approach. q = Before l
crossed the frontier / could not under
stand why it was so difficult to get a
clear and calm account of anything that
was happening in a country where
everything was happening. 9 3 & Now
l realize that all reports must be con-
Trajectory and incoherent. Only so can
they be graphic. There are no facts
that can be isolated and made to hang
together. There is no order or con-
sistency to convey" Mr.. Duranty in his
book is similarly wary of conclusions.
but he deals in facts-the facts of GER
tain Soviet trials.
"The Curious Lottery is composed of
10 true stories of trials conducted bv
the Soviet courts. . Mr.. Durantv saws:
Part OF these cases are so strange and
horrtd that they pass belief; as fiction
hardly a child would credit them. But
courts OF law unearth and bring clear
to light those secret things which are
Inc sovereign matter of romance; and,
being true, are not distorted, as is COM
monty done by romancers, save the
greatest" The first story, "Leningrad's
Lucky House." tells of a lottery prize
won by a cooperative tenement housing
81 souls" Quarrels arose over the dis
trlputlon OF the prize money, as they
naturally would, and the case was set
tied by the supreme court of the Soviet
Union, which decided that the money
might not be divided, but must be used
Tor the maintenance of the premises
concerned" and for ''hygienic and Gull
tnral measures for the welfare of the
tenants"-not a bad decision from the
STANDPOINT of common sense, whatever
the legal aspects of the case. The last
and most interesting of the stories. as
throwing much light on Soviet methods
and the workings of the Russian mind
Is Shadows of Shakhta,' an account of
Ihe trial for treason of 40 Russian and
s German coal mine technicians. Thew
were charged with conspiracy for coun-
ter-revolution on four charges: "a. Sa-
ootage, w1llful destruction of state prop
erty n willful waste of state funds,
o. Economic espionage, conveyance of
information regarding the our of
tne Soviet state to its enemies or poten-
III RnGY1fOC 0hr0a|
money from abroad for urposes hostile
10 The state. d. Conspiracy. mainte-
nance or an illegal organization hostile
or potentially hostile to the state" The
inquire OF h public prosecutor, Krvlenko
since Dierjinski's death the nn1rest.
souled zealot in Soviet Russia" occunies
the center of the story. Mr.. Durantv
concludes his book with the Statement
mat 1t AN fairly be said that in no
otner country IN the world Is it so hard
Ior a guilty person to evade punishment
as In RusNa today"
y y
The Hammer and the Scytbe" is
more general in its scope. The subtitle
Is communist Russia Enters the Sec
ond Decade" There are chapters on
The Capital of the Proletariat.p The
Capital Of the Tsars," The New Rul-
ing Glass" "Commissars of the Peonle. I"
The Peasant" "On the Voiga.,
daughters OF the Revolution" THE
Soviet Generation" IRONS" THE
worker at Play" Communist Art" and
The World From Moscow" The char
acterlzations OF the various commissars
OF n people throw light on many
Soviet policies and actions. ut was
Trotsky who suggested peoples COM
missars as a name for the department
neads OF n Soviet government" With
n death of Lenin and the exile of
Trotsky, the original leaders of the
communist movement were replaced by
otners. There are no such %personali-
ties among the commissars TODAY"
Banlshed with Trotsky are Zinoviev
and Kamenev. Stain now dominates
the Soviet, a man not a real Russian
but the son of a cobbler from the eau
casus Mountains. Since the age of II
ne has been a professional revolution
list; down in Georgia his old peasant
mother boasts that she worked 18 hours
a day n order that her son might not
have to follow any other trade. His
real name is Djugashvili. y = . Stain
calls himself steel evidently he likes
to think of himself as a man of steel,
strong, cold and infiexible. In his room
in the Kremlm and his guarded Office
on the top floor of the party headuuar-
tiers, he leads a clustered and secret
life. Few people in Moscow have ever
seen him and fewer still know anything
about him. Is he married? Who are
his friends? Nobody 1 asked could an
swer. His quiet even voice Is never
heard over the radio. and the panther
ID movement of his soldierly figure is
never seen on the screen. He is a DO
ltticat boss in the best old tradition,
omnipotence In the background. with
no oracle. Stain seldom speaks, but,
like all strong. silent men, when he does
there is no stopping him. Once at a
party caucus he delivered a keynote
speech five and a half hours long. He
makes 1t a rule to grant no interview;
neither the diplomats nor the jour-
naliStS In Moscow have ever talked to
him. Yet last Summer he gave an inter-
view to an American labor delegation
which lasted six hours. Through
the courtesy of the Americans I was
fortunate enough to be present at this
record-breaking interview, and I have
never seen a politician so anxious to be
or laconic. as the proverbially taciturn
head Of the most powerful party in the
world"
In "a Lost Commander: Florence
Nightingale" Mary Raymond Shipman
Andrews shows her subject as abhor-
ring almost equally the sentimentalities
of philanthropy as then organized and
Army red tape. Her n aim was to
get things done. Mrs. Andrews is in
dignant at Strachey's belittling of the
character of Florence Nightingale in
his Eminent Victorians." The "angel'
Of the Crimean Wa may have had a
quick temper. she nay have been auto
cratic, she may have been unreasona-
BILE, but she assuredly made the profess
sion of modern nursing, established a
standard of military hygiene and sani-
tation and saved hundreds of lives.
n r u