THE TESTIMONY OF MONSIEUR HERRIOT 255
Vichy Casino (Journal des Debuts): "La famine russe, qu'on
agite comma un epouvantoil, n'est que le produit suspect de la
propagande Uilerienne" And in another connection he plainly
declares that the Ukraine was not so much endangered by
hunger as by separatist machinations enjoying the support of
German National Socialism. (It should be mentioned that M.
Herriot sees in the National Socialists, especially in Alfred
Rosenberg, the wire-pullers behind Ukrainian separatism,
while Postyschev suspects the Polish aristocracy. Sir Henry
Deterding and others.) If M. Harriot's claim were true, it
would mean that the numerous Communist officials in the
Ukraine who have nationalist tendencies, and thus supported
Skrypnik against Postyschev, did so from no love for their own
nation, but were the agents or victims of others who remained
behind the scenes. In view of the tragic struggle now in progress
between Moscow centralization and the various peoples living
in the Soviet Union and anxious to preserve their individuality,
it is perhaps unnecessary to insist on the arbitrariness of
M. Herriot's interpretation of present events in the Ukraine.
Of course there will always be interested parties willing and
ready to exploit every current of feeling and every divergency
of view. Such elements may be observed at work in a great
many different countries. But to believe that real convulsions
within or between the nations can be initiated by the work
of "agents" or "propagandist machinations" implies a complete
misconception of the real conditions in most European coun-
tries, and reveals an entire misapprehension of the problem
of nationalities.
How deeply M. Herriot, in making such assertions, has
entangled himself in a net of hypotheses and suppositions is
shown by the fact that he accuses the Vozrqjdenie, an
organ of the right-wing Russian emigres appearing in Paris,
of attacking him because it is in the service of the National
Socialists, on the ground—as he states, "for the benefit of the
unprejudiced reader"—that the paper derives its news from