Evening star., 1938-09-11
HISTORIAN WRITES ON ENGLAND
Story of Empire Until Time of George III Assemblies Well
Facts-Engneers Book Soviet Gold Rush Inspired by
Dictator Stain Is Highly Recommended.


is no dreamer, and not much of q
humorist, either. He had taken on
the Job of increasing Russia's gold
output, he was in Russia for no other
reason than to do that, and Comrade
Stain gave him pretty fair co-opera-
tion. He says that he had no feel
ings at all about Russian politics, and
what opinions he formed he would
not utter as long as he remained on
the Soviet pay roll-which certainly
is proper attitude.
And now that he is no longer
Russian worker. he writes almost ex-
clusively of political questions in their
relation to his own job. The nomads
were being "denomadized" and the
kulaks were being liquidated right
before his eyes, but his comments are
limited to the effect which these pro-
cedures had on his gold mines. He
was given, suddenly, great body of
the unhappy Muslims, who, for ages.
had followed the life of independent
herders wandering over vast terri
tories. He was to teach them he
was llOW W opOka AA1OoSAAA AAAAAS
machinery. They used cyanide in
their baths, under the illusion that
it was soap, and their procedure with
dynamite was similarly ingenious
But what they felt over being rounded
up, as so many cattle, and driven
into mines for forced labor, he does
not attempt to say He needed labor.
ha nd
brought it to him. He was sorry
that it was such poor labor. but by
patience and vigilance, he got it to
producing.
Similarly with the kulaks, who
came to him from thousands of miles
away. not knowing where they were
or why they had been dispossessed
of their farms, or what they had
done that was considered criminal.
They were labor, too. Mr.. Littlepage
did not have an easy time of it, but
he made the best of what they gave
him, and his mines did produce. He
mentions that with simple honest
pride.
Highly interesting to the humane
reader will be his estimate of the just
ness of the famous sabotage trials,
of which practically everybody be-
lieves that the charges were trumped
up and the confessions forced. Not so
Mr.. Littlepage. He is cautious, but he
says that, in mining at least, sabotage
certainly took place, and to a serious
degree And he believes that it was
part of conspiracy which reached
outside Russia for its motivation. Com
rade Trotsky. by inference, raises his
troubled head here once more.
The book seems to the reviewer to
have great value. Nobody can doubt
its authors assertion that he did not
care fig for politics, one way or
the other. and he is no "disinterested
observer" either, gathering material
for book which must be sold to peo-
pie more or less partisan. He is as
dryly neutral as machine. and his
point of view is that of driving boss
who would be driving boss under any
system in the world No intepreta-
ton of Russia from just this stand
point has as yet been made, to the
reviewers knowledge. Other American
engineers who went over to help
mechanic the country have written
their "reminiscences. to be sure. but
generally they have been aggrieved
at the treatment which they received
and have spread their grievance over
the whole of their stories. Mr.. Lit
tlepage's Indifferent acceptance of
political conditions is, by its utter
dispassion, vastly more effective. 1t
bears out much of the horrors of the
Soviet program, and it also explains
much. 1t is really an enlightening
work, and is heartily recommended.
CAN WOMEN BE GENTLEMEN?
BY Gertrude Atherton. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Co.
NO ONE who reads with any kind
of regularity these days can
escape noticing the frequency with
which the subject of man VS. woman
keeps cropping up. Magazine articles
setting forth the merits of one sex
against another are common, and
in the past two weeks the reviewer
has mentioned two books which have
dealt with the rise of women against
the none-too-s o-satisfacto regulation