The trial at Moscow of alleged Rightists and Trotskyites is drawing to an end, and in a few days.time the fate of the prisoners will have been decided. It has been stated that the imposition of the death sentence is inevitable, though, if the precedents of other trials are remembered, it is possible that some of the accused will live out their lives in captivity instead of being shot. With all the wonderment with which the outside world seeks to understand what is going on in Moscow, there is an almost complete inability to understand the motivation behind these trials, and the mentality which finds such proceedings so highly satisfactory. and convincing. A clue may be found in what happened in 1792, when, in December, Louis Capet, ci-devant king of France, stood his trial and the "sea-green Incorruptible" clinched the whole matter of the trial and the position of the judges with the following:—
"This is no trial; Louis is not a prisoner at the Bar; you are not judges; you are—you cannot but be—statesmen, and the representatives of the nation. You have not to pass a sentence for or against a single man, but you have to take a resolution on a question of the public safety, and to decide a question of national foresight. It is with regret that I pronounce the fatal truth: Louis ought to perish rather than a hundred thousand citizens; Louis must die, that the country may live."
Thus Robespierre one hundred and forty six years ago. The speaker might now be Vishinsky and the name of any one of the twenty-one accused might be substituted for Louis Capet, and Robespierre when he said what he did sealed the fate of the unfortunate monarch. The latter had been forced to no confessions, but when these fatal words fell from the Incorruptible's lips, when it was made clear to the Court that they were not assembled as judges but as statesmen, and that expediency and not justice was to be the prevailing factor in whatever decision they came to, it must have been as apparent to Louis, as it is to these wretched men in Moscow, that there could be only one end to the proceedings—death in the case of Louis, and a like fate for most, if not all of the men who face the judges of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR. ion Feuchtwanger, the well-known writer, attended the trial of Radek and his companions in January of last year. He subsequently wrote and published his impressions, but his writings give no clue regarding the peculiarity of the proceedings in foreign eyes, and the remarkable unanimity with which the accused not only admitted their guilt, but strove further to blacken themselves and each other in the eyes of their judges and the world at large. Feuchtwanger can give no explanation, and, following the example of Ernst Bloch, quotes Socrates regarding certain obscurities in Heraclitus: "What I have understood is excellent. From which I conclude that the rest which I have not understood is also excellent." The Soviet reason for the wholesale admissions of guilt by the accused seems simple. They alleged in the case of Radek et al. that the reason why they confessed was because they were so irrevocably convicted by witnesses and documents during the preliminary enquiry that denial would have been senseless. That sounds plausible enough, but in the present instance Krestinsky sought to denounce the confessions which he was alleged to have made and to insist upon his innocence. He maintained that attitude during the whole of one session of the Court, but the next day when it reassembled made a complete volte face, acknowledging the truth of his confess sion and apologizing for ever having denied it. Reports published to-day show that the tragic Bukharin fought back and flatly refused to admit himself guilty of acts of sabotage and terrorism, denying most emphatically having had any share in the murder of Kirov. Vishinsky promptly put Yagoda into the witness box and he insisted that he, together with Bukharin, Rykov and the now executed Yenukidse, organized the murder. Bukharin persisted in his denials and the Court adjourned. What happened yesterday when the Court reassembled will be known during the course of to-day. Will Bukharin have persisted in his denials, or will he, also like Krestinsky, have withdrawn them apa apologized for having so troubled the judges? If he does the world at large will be convinced that something amounting to very severe pressure was brought to bear upon him during the adjournment over the weekend: the G.P.U. will have had longer to deal with this refractory defendant than they had in the case of Krestinsky, but if they succeed in wresting further admissions of guilt from Bukharin they will have completely ruined whatever case they had for the alleged bona fides of these trials.
While an interesting parallel has been drawn between these present proceedings and the trial of Louis Capet, another may be drawn between them and the procedure of the Holy Inquisition. In the latter case prisoners were forced to admit their guilt of the crimes charged against them, and on reconciliation with the Holy Church were handed over to the secular arm for punishment. The confessions of the prisoners at Moscow may be looked upon as an act of reconciliation with their Party. They will receive the punishment inevitable as a result of their confessions. Nothing worse can befall them than that which they now contemplate. It is astonishing that realizing this dread fact, only two have sought to emphasize the dignity of their manhood by refusing to assist their persecutors in the tragic farce which is being staged in Moscow for the edification of the Russian masses and the scepticism of the outside world. The Soviet contention that the proofs of their guilt disclosed in the preliminary investigation makes insistence upon innocence a senseless proceeding is not sufficiently watertight. If then proof of their guilt were ample, why this trial? These are not the only men who have fallen into the hands of the G.P.U. and been proved guilty, but they are some of the very few who have had to play roles as chopping blocks for the sarcasm and invective of the Soviet Prosecutor, Others have been executed out of hand. It is consequently difficult tq avoid the conclusion that there is an enormous domestic propaganda value in these proceedings, either for the purpose of showing to the proletariat the menaces to the government which roam in their midst, or, following the policy of the Roman emperors of panem et circenses, it is necessary to slaughter a few prominent men to make a Russian holiday. The suggestion has been made in the correspondence columns of this journal that after all it does not matter what happens to these men, for because of their past they thoroughly deserve their impending fate. This plea of poetic justice may satisfy some people, but those, who reverence the rule of law and the administration of proper justice, regard such a contention with dismay. If they can be brought to realize, however, that, as Robespierre emphasized, this is not a trial, that the jutbes are not judges, but statesmen, that expediency and not principle is to dominate its proceedings, then and only then will they understand what is happening in Moscow. It is not a trial, but the ceremonial preliminary to an already-decided-upon execution,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.