DEMOCRACY DEAD

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 68, Issue 28, 13 November 1947, Page 5

DEMOCRACY DEAD

HUNGARY TO-DAY ANTI-COMMUNIST LEADER ESCAPES (N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright). (Rec. 12.30 p.m.) STEPHENSVILLE, (Newfoundland), Now 12. Zoltan Pfeiffer, anti-Communi-ist leader who fled from Hungary a week ago when he was in the “shadow of the noose,” took off for the United States to-day to plan with other Hungarians in exile a counter-attack against his political enemies. He was accompanied by his Avife and five-year-old daughter, Laszlo Acsay, leader in Pfeiffer’s Hungarian Independence Party and Mrs Acsay. Pfeiffer said that for three months his party Avas the only real opposition in but it Avas like playing cards against* a man Avith a pistol loaded with dumdum bullets. He said the Russian charge that American agents had engineered his escape was- “ridiculous.” A company of Hungarian soldiers had covered his escape, but ■ what had happened to them was obscure. All Avere reported to have tried to get into the British zone, but only one made it. He declined to describe his method of escape because hundreds of others were using the same route. He had been passed from village to village Avhile Russian and Hungarian police were hunting him. He said that Communist secret police Avere “running amok. They have dropped their mask. Now I have graduated from the school on how to turn democracy into terrorism, I Avonder if the Western nations realise Avhat is hidden in the mist covering what they call ‘eastern democracy.’ Democracy as the West knew it is dead in Hungary, but under the ashes the little people of Hungary are still democrats.”