Man Of War

What sort of birthday present is suitable for a Minister of War?

In Moscow, when the 50th birthday of Commissar of War Klimentiy Voroshilov rolled around last week a public subscription was opened. With the proceeds three thumping birthday presents will be bought, presented to Comrade Voroshilov: a dirigible, "several combat planes,"-- a submarine.

There was another present, even more splendid, for which Russia's popular man of war did not have to wait. On his birthday the city of Lugansk, where he was born, became Voroshilovsk. Throughout the Soviet Union several hundred organizations and buildings were also named last week after Comrade Voroshilov. The entire populace, taught, by the Soviet press that a "Capitalistic invasion" of Russia may come at any hour, looks to the Commissar of War as its prospective savior, cheers him wildly when he rides out hard-eyed and unsmiling, his breast bedight with three Soviet medals, his bul let head surmounted by the turnip-shaped Red Army helmet.

In Moscow the knowing say that Comrade Voroshilov was hand-picked for the job of Commissar of War by Dictator Josef Stalin because, even with his three medals* "he possesses an almost total lack of ambition.'

Stalin had had enough of the too ambitious Trotsky, creator of the Red Army and the real "savior" of the Soviet State from the armies of Wrangel, Denikin and Yudenich. In 1925 Klimentiy Voroshilov stood 13th on the ranking list of Soviet commanders. Surely he is grateful to Stalin for lifting him over twelve disgruntled heads to the supreme command. His antecedents are impeccable. Born the son of a very poor Ukrainian peasant in 1881, he became a proletarian factory worker in early youth, has been since 1904 a consistent revolutionist, always modest, fearless and devotedly obedient to his party superiors.

The Red Army is the largest standing military force in the world, numbers 562,000. The Imperial Russian Army in 1913 numbered 1,400,000. One reason why the Red Russian Army is as large as it is today is that there also exists a White Russian Army sworn to exterminate the Soviet regime. In Paris recently the Commander-in-Chief of the White Russian Army, General Ivan Miller, said that his men number 100,000. Mostly they are in Jugoslavia, some "White" groups even being incorporated into the Jugoslav Army.

Protesting General Miller's activities in the French Parliament, Socialist Deputy Alfred Margaine observed last month with asperity:

"It is needless to ask what would happen if an Italian refugee announced that he commanded an army of 100,000 with its own military school at Paris, preparing to march on Rome against Fascist Italy!"

The standing army of the U. S. numbers 137,472 men. If there were 100,000 exiled Confederate soldiers in Canada, ready at the drop of a hat to march on Washington and attempt to re-establish pre-Abraham Lincoln conditions in the South, there might be a continuous "war scare" in the U. S. similar to that in Russia.

*First of the world's fighting air fleets in size is the French, second is the Russian.

*The three principal Soviet orders are: The Order of Lenin, The Order of the Red Banner, The Order of the Labor Red Banner. Holders of one or more decorations ride free on trolley cars everywhere in the Soviet Union. Two-medal men may ride from one end of the Union to the other and back twice a year. Heroes belonging to all three orders may use the rail and waterways of Soviet Russia free for any distance at any time. Agents of the Ogpu (Secret Police) also enjoy this privilege.

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