AN AMERICAN VIEW HUNGARY AND MIDDLE EAST: THE DIFFERENCE

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28133, 23 November 1956, Page 12

AN AMERICAN VIEW HUNGARY AND MIDDLE EAST: THE DIFFERENCE

[By

JOSEPH C. HARSCH.

Special Correspondent of the ’'Christian Science Monitor"}

(Reprinted by Arrangement)

NEW YORK, November 6. We have to go back to Dr. Joseph Goebbels for an example of attempted mental manipulation as dangerous as the one which Moscow has attempted to perpetrate upon us. Premier Bulganin has had the audacity to propose that the United States join the Soviet Union in “the use of force” to crush what he calls “aggression” in the Suez Canal area.

He does this roughly 30 hours after the armed forces of the Soviet, Union have crushed out the bright, tresh hopes of freedom in Hungary in one of the most sudden, brutal, and massive attacks in its history.

The propagandists of Moscow cannot seriously expect us to join them in pretending that they have not committed flagrant aggression against Hungary wheh they crushed a revolution which had succeeded. But they obviously are taking full advantage of the confusion which has arisen in our own midst from dur own readiness to assume that two of the oldest and most honourable nations in the West have committed an act of naked aggression.

“Mentally Disarmed” We are bemused and our alliance is in danger and the ability of the free world to face the ominous new tone from Moscow is undermined by this attempted manipulation. We have been mentally disarmed by our inability to distinguish between aggression and the behaviour of three countries that perhaps mistakenly have believed themselves to be in mortal danger and perhaps unwisely have resorted to arms in their sense of their own desperation. One does not have to agree with the reasons of Israel for launching its armed forces against Egypt, or of Britain and France for their following decision to seize the Suez Canal to see the difference between these actions and what the Soviet Union has done in Hungary. They differ in respect to purpose. The Soviet Union has, by massacre, deprived a satellite country of the right of self-determination in its form of government at home. Britain. France, and Israel state that they have no desire or intention to impose a new government or a new form of political organisation or a different theory of upon the people of Egypt, however much they may wish to depose President Nasser. Another Pearl Harbour They differ in military scope. The Soviet Union has re-established control over the whole of Hungary with its armed might, has taken that pitifully helpless nation by the neck, when it had turned toward freedom as a result of Moscow’s own soft policy, and has choked the obvious wish of a whole people. Britain and France say they will confine themselves to the Suez Canal area in which they have ancient interests and which they believe has been illegally and dangerously tampered with. Israel is interested in securing its southern frontier from the 1 steady, mounting harassment of border raids which it believed were the prelude to an Arab “holy war" aimed at its extermination. They differ in respect to warning. Moscow gave no warning when it struck the new Hungarian regime. On the contrary it had encouraged the Hungarians to believe that they were free to seek their own form of government. Two weeks before this aggression, Moscow issued a formal statement asserting the right of “sovereign equality.” As Soviet forces were moving into position for the assault on Hungary, Soviet officials were pretending to be conferring with the new Hungarian Government for the withdrawal of all Soviet forces. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Moscow deliberately encouraged the Hungarians to take the political steps which Moscow then usea as the pretext for destroying them. It was as deceptive as the diplomatic talks the Japanese held in Washington the morning of Pearl Harbour. Britain and France had maintained consistently from the beginning of the Suez talks that they insist on international control of the Suez Canal. They mobilised their armed forces openly while they negotiated for a satisfactory agreement. Israel has long since warned everyone of what it would do if the balance of power in the area should continue to swing against it. What Britain, France, and Israel did. apart from a last-minute concealment of their intentions from Washington, was a surprise only to those who had refused to believe what they had said. What the Soviet Union did in Hungary was concealed by every device employed by those who intend to attack by surprise. There is a world of difference be-

tween the man who strikes out in defence of what he regards and repeatedly asserts to be his vital interests and the man who crushes the unsuspecting and the helpless without warning. The first man may be mistaken about the danger to himself, and he may make a grave mistake ui seeking his own recourse. The second has committed a deliberate act of repression. So long as we cannot see the difference, we will be in danger from Moscow. Not until we can see the difference, will it be possible to re-establish the unity of the free world against a force which has hinted its “determination” to use all its weapons, including atomic bombs, in the Middle East.

The most fatal fallacy we can entertain right now is to assume that Britain. France, and Israel are as guilty of aggression as Moscow. This is precisely what Moscow hopes we will do.