EAST EUROPE

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28153, 17 December 1956, Page 17

EAST EUROPE

Sir—lt is inevitable that efforts be made to make political capital out of Hungary’s tragedy and to present the affair simply as a struggle of freedom-loving Hungarians against oppression. But before condemning the Russians, one must be sure that our freedom-loving Hungarians are not the same people who. three times in 75 years, joined Germany in ruthless aggression. It seems significant that those influential people who shed most crocodile tears are the same people who are cynically encouraging Germany to spend £730.000.000 on arms by 1960, have assisted back into power Krupps and the big industrialists, who in the words of General Telford Taylor, United States prosecutor at Nuremburg, “were the indestructible common denominator of Germany’s murderous and obstinately repeated lunges at the world’s throat,” and have voted millions of dollars for the express purpose of making trouble in Socialist countries. —Yours, etc., JOHN STEPHENS. December 13, 1956.

Sir, —These are times of peril for the Commonwealth and severe restraint on the part of people like “A.M.” I support the views of John

Burbridge. I have been closely associated with European history ? e JL we " t overseas in World War i- the Russian workers revolted, successfully, against the Tsarist . because the bureaucracy ?J ine ",, their human aspirations. Then the Allies invaded Russia with similor disastrous results which have occurred to the British and French oyer the Suez Canal nationalisation, is the time to cease this stupid a nti-Communist policy and replace it with ideas for world co-operation, and friendship. The Russians do not want war, but they are not going to stagnate because of biased people like • j- ” mus * all drop our prejudices and co-operate on a world basis to make Egypt. Israel, and Hungary prosperous. This is no time for the pot to call the kettle black. — Yours, etc.,

RALPH S. WHEELER. Timaru, December 14, 1956.

. Sir,—ln view of the distortions and lies appearing in the news columns, the following, taken from an overseas source, may be of interest. It refers to talks which have recently been held between the Soviet Union and Rumania, and reads as follows: “The Soviet and Rumanian Governments exchanged views on many major questions regarding the current international situation. Their viewpoints regarding and their attitude towards the events occurring in Hungary are completely identical. They expressed satisfaction over the victory, of the Hungarian people in smashing the schemes of the counter-revolution for a come-back and in defending the people’s democratic system. They held that the socialist countries which share good or ill fortune with Hungary could not be indifferent towards the dangerous plight in which the Hungarian people had been placed.” The quotation is from Hsinhua News Agency and dated December 7. Yours, etc., R.H. December 15, 1956. [As far as we can see, the only significance of this pronouncement is the agreement of the Russian and Rumanian Communist Governments that Communist governments are entitled to keep themselves—and each other—in power and to suppress any opposition ruthlessly. The agreement must be very comforting to Communist regimes in dread of workers’ revolts such as those in East Germany, Poland, and Hungary.—Ed., “The Press.”]