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Show WORLD'S HAPPIEST CHILDREN Halliburton Tells of Russia's Schools Where Students So Love Their Work That It's Almost Impossible for Directors to Drive Them From It By RICHARD HALLIBURTON Author of "The Royal Road to Romance," etc. WRITING home about Russia is one of the most difficult assignments I've ever had. To write forcefully J and well about this infuriat- ing but astounding country, ! one should have definite con-I con-I victions and opinions. But, in ! keeping with the experience I of most other foreigners, my j convictions suffer such vio-i vio-i lent and such frequent changes that I hardly know myself from day to day what my convictions are. Each morning I swear anew that the rule of the Soviets Is the cruel-! cruel-! est, most brutal, and most colossal ! racket ever rammed at pistol point down the throats of a helpless na-: na-: tion. But before night I will have seen some isolated feature of Bolshevism Bol-shevism that is so enlightened, so advanced, and so inspiring, that for i the moment I forgive and forget the tyranny that has produced it The Soviet system ol persecuting and imprisoning the mother, sister, sis-ter, children of any Russian citizen who tries to escape from this gang-land's gang-land's grip, seems to me as inhuman in-human and barbaric a custom as ever existed in the most savage ages of history. But just when I am exploding with indignation because of it, I visit one of the model prisons and immediately feel that it is we Americans, Amer-icans, with our dismal and degrading degrad-ing prison system, who are the savages. sav-ages. Schools Appease Wrath. The ruthlessness and merciless-ness merciless-ness with which the Bolsheviks go ; about exterminating all classes of j Russian society except the third-i third-i class themselves outrages my sense of justice, and sends me off 1 on the warpath in defense of hu-i hu-i man liberties. But again, my hostility against this crucifixion of the civilized minority mi-nority cools when I enter one of the special Soviet schools, and see the protection and sympathy and spiritual spirit-ual stimulation being poured out to young people who before the revolution would have been in some cases actually were beggars, beg-gars, thieves, or illiterate and bestial bes-tial peasants. I've just come from two days spent in such schools and prisons. Let me tell about them quickly be- fore I hear the crack of the racketeers' racket-eers' whip lashing out again from the Kremlin's towers, and before I i put my fist through every complimentary compli-mentary word I've written about the ! Bolsheviks. I Here in Moscow is a school that j is unique in the world a state school for boys and girls who want I to run away and join the circus! Want to Join the Circus? j The circus school is advertised : far and wide from Vladivostok to ( Samarkand. The advertisement ; reads: Soviet Boys! Soviet Girls! I Do you want to join the circus as an artist? Are you over fourteen ' and under eighteen? Come to us ' and learn clowning, juggling, tight-i tight-i rope walking, acrobatics, horseman-I horseman-I ship. We send you a ticket and pay for everything. The Soviet state ' needs you! ' j What boy or for that matter, j what girl could resist such a 1 truly wonderful, magical, invitation? invita-tion? Thousands of applications pour in. At present the school directors can choose only a small fraction of , those who plead to be admitted, accepting, preferably, the orphans and the homeless. ; The freshman class numbers forty the forty most fortunate children in the whole world, if we are to accept the opinion of the others who must just look on from : the outside, and yearn. I All freshmen must take the same j courses acrobatic dancing, tumbling, tum-bling, bare-back and bicycle riding, gymnastics, tight-rope walking, flying fly-ing trapeze. They also have three hours each day of academic study. Soviet State Circus School. The classes of freshmen, gawkish and clumsy, are followed by the second year students (numbering J thirty - five) who, now having i a chance to specialize, are already ' excellent performers. When the sen-' sen-' iors appear (reduced to twenty-five) ! one sees marvels of muscle and ' agility with barrel chests and bulging bulg-ing legs. But no matter what the class, everybody goes through his tricks with the utmost joyousness and enthusiasm. en-thusiasm. The acrobats have to be ! pulled out of the ring to make way ' for the next performers. They re-, re-, treat into the street and carry on 1 with their hand-springs there. The 1 clowns, having gone through their daily half hour of routine clowning, ' continue to fall down and paddle j each other all over the school. The bare-back riders, both boys and girls, drive the poor old practice rw r'.rrr.-vZ'&n&w. .j, unguium.. fW-' thwT7w - -3 m.'V.wvrykW y 5 .. . - . ' jj i -- ' . " " ' V f , v " T . !- , "-''-v s S ' - N 'TN ' l - ; - ) I ! - - j ; " "X - ; " - S : - -' j Lessons in toe dancing begin at six. At ten the muscles in their feet and legs are like iron. The regime is so strict and so severe that of every ten who enter the school only two graduate. horse almost to death, pleading to be allowed just one more time around the ring, just one more dive through the paper hoops. The jugglers jug-glers hide behind the scenery to steal another period of rehearsaL The whole school has to be driven home to the dormitories at night by means of angry threats of punishment pun-ishment from the director. The day I visited the school the young aerial acrdbats, flying and swinging high over the head of the instructor, positively refused to come down, and only shouted defiance defi-ance back at him as they continued to sail through the air with the greatest of ease. The instructor finally fi-nally had to turn the lights off in order to get his over-zealous flying trapezers home to supper. In no other school on earth, I'm sure, are the students so profoundly in love with their "studies" as in this school. Here, fqr once, a sport-loving sport-loving child gets all 'the sport his heart desires, accompanied by spangled costumes, and colored lights, and music, and white horses, and applause all the glory of the circus. In Russia the Soviets may be exiling ex-iling thousands, tears may be flowing flow-ing in oceans, and no man may be able to call his soul his own, but right in the midst of it are the one hundred happiest boys and girls on earth. Ballet School in Russia. Perhaps not quite so happy but certainly as absorbed in their work are the students in the Moscow state ballet school. Here they begin not at fourteen but at four. Almost as soon as they can walk, physically perfect children chil-dren are placed beside the exercise bar and trained to stand on their toes. Not only dancing, but expression, expres-sion, gestures and rhythm are taught the boys as well as the girls. The average American boy would die of shame if he were caught taking lessons in looking ethereal eth-ereal and imitating a swan. But in Russia, ballet instruction is a deadly dead-ly serious business, and one must be hard as nails to keep pace. Dancing Danc-ing is the students' whole world. They eat, sleep, and live to dance. And the results are marvelous. By twelve years old, the children have conquered the most intricate and difficult steps. At the 125th anniversary anniver-sary performance of the Moscow ballet school, with Stalin and all his ministers on hand, a fifteen-year-old boy, inspired by the presence of such divinities and by the crash of the hundred - piece orchestra, leaped and whirled about the stage with such winged toes and such incredible skill that he brought the dance-blase audience to its feet, and completely "stopped the show." Out of every ten babies who enter the ballet school, perhaps only two finally graduate. No one can tell, when the child is four, what it will look like at fourteen. Often the boys grow up to be six feet, three, and too tall to imitate a swan. Or the girl, because of her ruthless exercising, exer-cising, may develop into such a husky half-back that it would take two dance partners instead of one to stagger with her on their shoulders shoul-ders across the stage. The dis charges, therefore, are frequent. But the child meanwhile has had the finest education possible in Russia, Rus-sia, and is always provided with a livelihood elsewhere. Such institutions as these would help melt anybody's wrath against the Bolsheviks. But it is in their penal system where the Soviets completely com-pletely win one's sympathy and admiration. ad-miration. Russia's Penal System. About twenty miles outside Moscow Mos-cow is the world's perfect prison perfect in that it turns out self-respecting, self-respecting, skilled, responsible citizens, cit-izens, and not furtive, embittered, broken men as in America. In the first place the word "prison" is not used, nor the word "prisoner." There are no cells, no bars, no guards, not even a wall. But the 3,500 boys and young men who live here have all been thorough-going criminals, and are serving sentences sen-tences for every known crime from petty thieving to assassination. The Soviets are implacable environmentalists. en-vironmentalists. They insist that environment en-vironment alone is to blame if young people take to crime. If the environment environ-ment is improved, character will likewise improve. So when offenders come to Bol-shevo Bol-shevo they are kept busy going to school, learning to be skilled workmen, work-men, learning to swim and dance and to govern themselves. Their labor in the institute factories is paid for on the same scale as work done by free men. Half their salary sal-ary goes toward their clothes and board and keep. They can spend the other half in Moscow if they choose and on anything they like. A self - sufficient commune has grown up about the place. The older boys with good records are allowed to mate or marry with wives from outside. Such mating is in fact encouraged, en-couraged, and each couple is provided pro-vided with private living quarters. There is a splendid school for the children of these menages. The result re-sult of this enlightened policy is that over eight hundred members of this commune are married, and eighteen hundred children laugh and sing around the "prison" grounds. There is a hospital, excellently equipped. A movie and theater play to packed houses every night. So ideal and so carefree is life at Bol-shevo Bol-shevo that the director's problem, as at the circus school, is to persuade per-suade his men to leave when their sentence is up. During the monster celebration on November 7lh, members of all the state schools and labor unions in Moscow marched by Stalin's reviewing re-viewing stand on Red square. He saluted them all, proudly, as they passed. But when a regiment of one thousand Bolshevo boys one thousand thou-sand ex-criminals marched before him with their eyes shining, banners ban-ners waving, and bands playing. Stalin and nil his ministers cheered and cheered and cheered . . . and the tears streamed unrestrained down their leather checks. And as these thousand "convicts" passed, I thought of Sing-Sing, anJ San Qucntin, and Blackwell's island and I almost wept myself from shame! Dell Syndicate. WNU Scrvlct. |