Czechoslovakia

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31769, 28 August 1968, Page 16

Czechoslovakia

Sir, —Mark D. Sadler, as a well-known opponent of the Vietnam war, instead of uttering his fatuously gratuitous call to the New Zealand Government to demand the recall of the Soviet Legation, and giving tacit support to the Prime Minister’s hypocritical condemnation of the Warsaw Pact countries’ actions, should, rather, be redoubling his efforts to persuade his fellow New Zealanders to demand the ending of this country’s participation in the United States war of aggression against the people of Vietnam. Every New Zealander who likewise condemns or feels emotional about the Warsaw Pact countries lays himself open to the charge of arrant hypocrisy, as long as his country’s troops are actively engaged in the United States invasion of Vietnam.—Yours, etc., M. HOLLAND.

Sir,—lf Russia could read all the letters in the press and see the demonstrations going on in this country would it appease New Zealand by leaving Czechosloslovakia? No, it would just laugh at us and call us a lot of fools (which we are). Nobody in New Zealand knows why Russia invaded that country. Russia no doubt had good reason for its actions. If people want to demonstrate, let them do so against their own government and leave other countries alone. We demonstrated against the Americans in Vietnam. What good did it do? Nothing. The war is still going on. This world is in a bad way just now, but within the next 10 years it will be in a proper mess.—Yours, etc., J. OBERG. Rangiora, August 27, 1968

Sir, —I am inclined to agree with the Soviet delegate to the United Nations in his reply to America's Mr Ball, when he said the Western Powers were poking their nose into something that was none of their business. It seems strange that the United Nations, the press, and almost everyone else seem to push the French H-bomb test, the slaughter in Vietnam, and the starving in Africa into the background when Mother Russia considers it necessary to chastise one of her wayward children. After all, history will prove that communism

has done more for its people in a short 50 years than all the western capitalist Powers have done for the greater part of the world, such as India, Africa, South-East Asia, or South America, in 1968 years. —Yours, etc., PERCY L. McMILLAN. August 27, 1968.