Warning Against Communism

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31764, 22 August 1968, Page 16

Warning Against Communism

Yesterday’s events in Czechoslovakia confirmed the belief that communism did not change or mellow, said Mr Pat Walsh, a Canadian lecturer on the threat of world communism, at a public meeting organised by the Aid Rhodesia Movement last evening. Mr Walsh told the meeting of about 80 that the op-

pressed peoples behind the “Iron, bamboo and sugar-cane curtains” were the greatest allies in the fight against communism. “Soviet ambassadors all over the world now have the unpleasant task,” he said, “of rationalising and defending their masters’ actions in Czechoslovakia. They have to wait until they get a cablegram from Moscow and then repeat like parrots what they are told.” Mr Walsh said that no matter what the pundits of the press and radio said, the question of a Soviet-Chinese

split should be taken with a grain of salt. He claimed that Russia and China planned together to encircle the world by dominating the seaways, and that Communist infiltration through North Africa was part of the plot. The Friends of Rhodesia movement in Canada was aware, he said, that the Zambesi River was the line that stopped the downward march of communism in Africa. “It is the only line of defence that prevents them from overthrowing the rest of Africa and stopping the Cape route,” said Mr Walsh. He said the 1966 Communist congress in Havana, attended by Soviet, Chinese and other Communist party representatives, was evidence of the solidarity of international communism. Another example was the way in which China co-oper-ated to let Russian ships sail down to North Vietnam with arms.

Mr Walsh said the Communist heirarchy would not tolerate idealists. Che Guevara, the Cuban hero of the new left students, had been killed in Bolivia, he said, through the agency of the Soviet Union because he was interfering with their own plans to take over that country. Idealists had been killed off by Stalin in Eastern Europe, and the story was the same throughout the world.

Mr A. R. Guthrey, who said that he did not quite know why he was there, but that he had been asked to chair the meeting, refused to accept a resolution from the floor.

The resolution called on the Prime Minister (Mr Holyoake) to impose the same sanctions against Russia as were imposed against Rhodesia, and to seek the exclusion of the Russian team from the Mexico Olympic Games.