COMMUNISM IN CHURCHES

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 26986, 11 March 1953, Page 9

COMMUNISM IN CHURCHES

INQUIRY MAY BE HELD IN U.S. (Rec. 10 p.m.) WASHINGTON, Mar. 9. Mr Harold Velde, chairman of the House of Representatives Un-American Activities Committee, said tonight that the committee might investigate Communism in the nation’s churches and Communist "infiltration” of the clergy. He said, however, it was doubtful whether the inquiry could be held this year because “there are so many other Phases of Communism and subversive activity that we have to investigate. Mr Velde said the investigation would probably include individual members of the cloth, “including some who seem to have devoted more time to politics than they have to the ministry.” He sais it was very important to impress on the American people that the Soviet Union, through the American Communist Party, was out to destroy all religious freedom in the United States.

Confirmation of this could be seen from yesterday’s issue of “L’Humanite,” organ of the French Communist Party “and the most important Communist mouthpiece in th2 western world.” This journal had published a few hours before Mr Malenkov made his funetal oration emphasising the desire for peace, a frontpage leading article calling for “peaceful co-existence between Communism and capitalism.” “From these data and from other circumstantial evidence it is plain that two basic themes are preoccupying the new Government in Moscow.

“The first is the desire to reassure the Soviet people and their satellite allies that no war is imminent as the aftermath of their dictator’s death.

"The second is the effort to gain world confidence and to permit Mr Malenkov a period during which to establish a firm base for his perhaps uneasy regime.” The "New York Times” said in a leading article that the Soviet Union should support the recent Soviet speeches emphasising the Communist desire for peace with some concrete action particularly in Korea. “If the new regime in Moscow’ wished the outside world to take these words more seriously than Stalin’s empty phrases, it will have to back them with acts that really serve the cause of peace. The open support of Communist aggression in Korea and Indo-China voiced elsewhere in the speeches gives a more disquieting impression.”