THE TESTIMONY  OF  MONSIEUR HERRIOT	253
guides, and putting an end to the whole official mystification
which was practised upon him during his five days' visit, hour
by hour, from morning to night, over a stretch of nearly 23ooo
miles. He did not do this, no matter for what reason, and he has
therefore no right to pose as an experienced administrator
having made serious studies on the spot, and so to mislead a
numerous public in the various states of the world with
erroneous opinions proclaimed as unchallengeable truth. Nor
has he any right to base what he says on the authority of such
German experts as Dr. Otto Schiller, whom he cites on more
than one occasion; or if he quotes him on certain special
questions, it is his duty to inform the public that the con-
clusions reached by Dr. Schiller in the "thorough and critical
investigations" to which M. Herriot refers are diametrically
opposite to his own on the subject of Russian agriculture.
When M. Herriot speaks of the dreadful experiment of col-
lectivization applied to the Russian peasantry as though the
Government were confining itself to the abolition of the kulak
system, or, as he calls it, "of the landowners who make other
peasants work for them/5 it is a matter of opinion. When he
describes the ideal conditions in the collective farms and Soviet
farms which he visited, that also is his own affair. But when he
arrogates to himself the right to describe the famine as the
outcome of political fanaticism or of a campaign of propa-
ganda, then it is in the interests of truth and of the innocent
victims of the famine to rebut his judgment and to condemn
the irresponsible methods by which it was reached.
The second point on which I must join issue with M. Herriot
is his claim that the Soviet regime is a model Government, "an
international system allowing for the dominance of the various
races and allowing the various peoples an intellectual expansion
for which they are particularly grateful," a system in which, as
he further claims, "the sacred rights of the minorities" are
realized.1 Elsewhere there is a variation on this theme, and his
1 Pester Uoyd, October i, 1933.