The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-12-06
RA~.A
Lying as a Fine Art
BY JORGE

INIPATIENCE untempered by good sense, haA
l been one afflction among many of the rene
gadeS from Communism, both of the Lovestone
and Trotsky persuasion. A case in point has
been their aggravation at the persistence of the
N. Y. Times correspondent in Moscow Mr.. Wall
ter Duranty, in telling the truth about the bank
ruptcy of their respective but common causes in
Soviet politics
These worthless have every intolerance OF a
Czarist enigre, unmindful of the necessity in
realistic counter-revolution of the use of tact
In their injured annoyance they thought the
N. Y. Times did not know its own business, and
cried aloud that the Times dismiss Duranty this
clever stupidity being disguised as an assertion
that the Communist Party should put Duranty
on its Central Committee.
AS though Duranty were in any ultimate or
essential way, any different than any number
of other artful bourgeois journalists, who know
how to gain credence by writing the truth some
of the time, particularly when the expected hour
comes when fundamental interests are at stake.
The imperalists have planned to invade Sow
let Russia by armed force in 1881 next year,
mark that down, as they still intend to do that
very thing The criminals on trial at Moscow
aiding this Intervention plan. Everybody,
at least everybody in Moscow-with one excep-
ton, apparently-is convinced of that More
onstration that they are convinced of that.
The Soviet Government is clearly convinced
of that and, in this critical situation, with the
clouds of swiftly gathering, is trying to
show to the workers of all the world the facts
and their enormous significance.
And what does Mr. DuuantyN write when this
critical moment appears, moment in which it
is no longer matter of readable chatter about
what to the imperialst masters are matters of
secondary importance, but of speaking seriously
of things which cause the foreign offices OF
great world capitalist powers to make decara-
tons of exposing or concealing the motive forces
and machinery of a new and bloody world war?
At this moment Mr.. Duranty comes forward,
still writing cleverly, still ready to be partly
truthful, but quite clearly playing the game of
belittling the sinister meaning of the interview
ton plot of making smoke-screens of doubt and
casting forth the idea that, after all, the con-
LESSONS of these plotters have no basis in fact.
To this end Mr. Duranty, in the N. Y. Times of
Dec. 3, wrote quite an article, of which the fol-
lowing excerpts are fair samples
Such evidence arouses doubts that tend to
lurk in the mind of the foreign observer through
out this trial" THE accused have confessed they
made great big plot but whenever it comes
down to just what they did with the money and
how the conspiracy was organized and what it
deserts
them and everything grows blurry and vague"
"They unable or unwilling to explain just
what they did and how
The Times played up" this story, and played
down" another which, by chance, was printed on
the same page, as an Associated Press dispatch
from Moscow, wherein at least some of the de-
tails which Mr.. Duranty couldn't See were
given in most explicit way.
In the A. P. dispatch the prisoners, Kuprianov,
Krassovski and Sirotsinsky were noted as con-
Tossing how much money they got where from
and what they did for it. Kuprianoys group
got $4,000 rubles graft from cotton machinery
purchases much from American concerns :.
there was a system whereby white Russians
abroad got the l per cent and the anti-Soviet
engineers got per cent"
"At one time" admitted KraSsovski 1--WE had
SO per cent of the locomotives on these lines
near the >frcntier) out of repair thus making
the fall of the Soviet easier if the revolt came"
Again, Sirotsnsky confessed-"We carefully Sc
lected site for the plant Ca chemical plant) on
swamp land, and big sum of money was spent
in its construction Later the swamp was dis
covered and it was found necessary to construct
great dixie all around the building to save it.
Even now it is not sure whether the building
eventually will not be loss"
The moral of all this is not of course that
workers should believe the Associated Press
rather than Mr.. Duranty but to regard all CAPT.
talist correspondents with equal suspicion, and
to look for-and find-the reliable accounts of
this and all other class issues in the Daily
Worker
And just to make matters beastly concrete,
we are informed that at the newsstand in the
cooperative in the Bronx, where there live IT'S
members of the Communist Party there are 2lO
copies of the N. Y. Times sold daily, and just II
copies of the Daily Worker