Jan. 10, Not enough attention has been paid of the Soviet dumping which is proving so great a feature of economic life in Manchuria as well as in other parts of the world—Europe in general. and Britain in particular. The five year' plan—the piatiletka—may be nearer fulfil ment than is generally supposed, but that apotheosis is mot to mean what the Russian masses believed it would—the industrialization of the country and the freedom of the workers.
Instead a degree of helotry has already been established which makes the lot of the Russian in Russia to-day infinitely worse than it was in the worst days of the imperial regime. Whether that was the ultimate objective of the Soviets it is difficult to that it has come about is But the Communist leaders have now to show results in cash, if not in the political betterment of the masses, or perhaps in some advance in spreading the worldwide revolution which they 80 earnestly preach to the credulous masses. Financially it is to be doubted whether the piatiletka is anything but a failure. In view of the precarious plight of the rouble in Russia, it is more than probable that the free operation of exchange by the Bank of Chosen in Vladivostok, a8 against the determined attempts of the Soviets to maintain an internal, artificial value may be one of the outstanding causes for the present Russo-Japanese dispute, for while the Soviet has been strenuously pegging the rouble at par, the Bank of Chosen, it is alleged, has been dealing in the currency at its foreign exchange value which is somewhere about one-tenth of par, An_ interesting situation is, therefore, created.
The Soviet has to finance its purchases abroad and, to do this, the domestic rate for the rouble is idess; cold-blooded merchants and financiers throughout the world are only interested in the international exchange rates. Obviously, then, if directly the rouble crosses the Soviet border it drops ninety per cent. of its ne, some other means of paying for purchases abroad have to be discovered and, naturally the best is money obtained and kept abroad for the sale of exports. It is a counsel of desperation just as much as a general attack on world trade that Soviet exports into Manchuria are being sold so much below internal prices that a system of smuggling Russian goods into Russia has already come into being. The whole business is just as ridiculous as that of, Paying interest out of capital and must eventually come to the me result, But that is a consideration which will not. weigh much with the Soviet rulers so long as they are able to obtain money for their immediate needs abroad without confession to their ments of the reckless method by which it has been secured. That they are saved preaching to their masses that the whole scheme is not a frantic endeavour to extricate themselves from the middle into which they have stumbled will not prevent the ultimate economic consequences.
That the dumping as such constitutes a serious inconvenience to traders of other nationalities no one for a moment will deny, but it seems a game in which the Soviet must in the long run exhaust itself. It would be idle to prophesy when that will be, but fair words butter no parsnips when a large population is forced to endure food shortage and the like simply because: the Soviet is short of money and is diverting domestic necessaries [for the purpose of "raising the wind" abroad. Nor is it likely' that this dumping will have the far-reaching effect that so many' fear. Considering: the internal condition of Russia it seems obvious that it cannot be bled much whiter, and dumping.cannot be effectively carried out unless all the goods necessary are available,. It does not seem unwarranted to suggest that, unless the Soviet can whistles. supplies out of the ang) they are doing now in thi direction just as much as they will ever be able to do, while nothing could be more disastrous to the whole Communist system than the inevitable failure of this interesting experiment in eccentric economies. So, that annoying as the temporary results of this putsch into the world markets must be, it has ing grace of indicating desperate are the needs of the commercial -ingenues Moscow.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.