London, Feb. 24.
Questioned regarding the Dutch' flights across India in the House of Commons to-day, Captain Wedgwood Benn, Secret State for! India, informed Lieut.-Commander J.-M. Kenworthy, Labour member! for Central Hull, request for ies was being considered and that no decision had: been reached.
Sir Hubert Wilkins, who flew ints port ahead of his steamship yesterday after hair-raising advent un in hazardous Antarctic exploration, granted an interview to-day in Which he described the discovery two new islands in the Antarctic.
He declared that fie had proved that South Polar areas heretofore charted as land are actually water.
Sir Hubert said that he hopes that meteorological bases. will established, and that there will be continuation of studies founded upon the discoveries which he has made dating the past few months.
Sir Hubert himself does not expect to return here in 1931, however. Instead, he hopes to conduct a submarine' exploration in the Norta Polar regions which he has already flown over.
The submarine to be used is the invention of Simon Lake, pioneer in submarine work, and it will probably be under command of Captain Sloan Danenhower, Mr. Lak partner and formerly with the U.S. Navy.
The. Defender, as the Lake submarine is called, will leave New York this summer for Spitzbergen and it will proceed across the Norta Pole under the ico according to present plans as outlined by Sir Hubert, The distance to be traversed is about 2,000 miles. The ship is especially built for the work and it can plow through thin ice, submerging and proceeding undemeata with under-ice contact. maintained by a trolley when the ice field is too thick to break—United Press, us Letter In a letter to 2 correspondent in' regard to the religious persecution in Russia, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, the Premier, emphasizes that> the religious. persecution is hateful to the Government, but states that the question is: What are the facts and what can be done? "It would be the easiest thing in the world to act so as to add to the inflictions which the Christians in Russia may have to ensure. That we shall avoid, whatever the agitation may be."
Mr. MacDonald says that a good part of the statements made in regard to: the persecution has been proved to be false, but that the history of religion in Russia is unfortunately full of records of persecution, and the revotutionar: mentality, which generations of oppression have created, has alt the characteristics of narrowness and violence of purpose.
The Government's diplomatic re~ cognition of Russia, Mr. MacDonatd goes on, was decided purely on 'There was Practical'
and was decided no reference to political' purely internal s or policies, and the agitation, ed by polities as much as by ious toleration, must not deflect, any Government from pursuing the ordinary rules of international relationships and prudence. Outlawing a country would not make it amenable to world opinion, but th Mr. MacDonald adds that even now the tone and temper of the agitation are hardening the heart of the Russian Government, giving it an opportunity of persuading its own People without grounds that this is all part of a conspiracy on the part of other Governments to begin a war against the Soviet.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.