EAST EUROPE

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28183, 23 January 1957, Page 8

EAST EUROPE

Sir, —Professor G. A. Knight spent some years in Hungary before coming to Dunedin as professor at the Presbyterian Church Theological Hall. He had this to say in 1949 (“Otago Daily Times”) about conditions before the socialist regime: “The two greatest landowners were the Roman Catholic Church and Count Eszterhazy; the latter, who owned thousands of square miles, has appeared in court to support the Cardinal. On most estates the peasants worked impossible long hours, for no pay in cash; but since most landowners were beneficent, the peasant received free a cottage, his food, clothing, and other small gifts, and a quarter of an acre of land for himself. He could not seek employment with another landowner. Thus he was virtually a serf. Nearly 1,000,000 peasants were landless, seasonal labourers living below the famine line, and often without homes.” The recent fascist counter-revolution backed by U.S.A, was to return to similar conditions.—Yours, etc., JOHN BURBRIDGE.

January 21, 1957. [Mr, Burbridge is surely a little unfair to the Communist regime. We doubt if the great, mass of the people who rebelled against it were anxious to return to the conditions described by Professor Knight: but it is at least possible that many Hungarians preferred the old serfdom to the new.— Ed., ‘‘The Press."!

Sir, —What is really horrifying about the general reaction to Communist propaganda is that so much of it is taken—or appears to be taken, which is just as dangerous—at its face value. It is thereby raised from the plane of sheer nonsense, where it belongs, to the level of something approaching the rational. The Hungarian Government’s preposterous and impudent demand for the repatriation of refugees is a case in point. Mr Casey is reported as saying that Australia has no intention of “obeying” the demand. Since when has Australia contemplated “obedience” to any demand from behind the Iron Curtain? New Zealand’s attitude, too, might be construed as implying that the case is at least arguable. If the language of diplomacy is incapable pf expressing utter contempt and derision, better, surely, the traditional forthright phraseology of the barrack square.— Yours, etc., M.T. January 22, 1957.

Sir, —I recommend Peter Fryer’s “Hungarian Tragedy” to persons keen to know more about recent events in Hungary. Persons like Ralph S. Wheeler, “Wake Up,” “N. 8. and “Curiotis” may be deterred when they read in the introduction: “I was in Hungary when this happened. I saw for mysei* that the uprising was neither organised nor controlled by fascists or reactionaries, though reactionaries were undoubtedly trying to gain control of it. I saw for myself that Soviet troops who were thrown into battle against ‘counter-revolution’ fought in fact not fascists or reactionaries but the common people of Hungary: workers, peasants, students and soldiers.” But persons keen to know the truth will read on, and particularly persons keen to know what has been suppressed in news from Hungary, and who suppressed it. Peter Fryer says: “The ‘Daily Worker’ (London’s Communist daily) sent me to Hungary, then suppressed what I wrote.” —Yours, etc., R.L. January 22, 1957.