New regimes

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34046, 9 January 1976, Page 8

New regimes

Sir. —During all the years the Vietnamese were being indiscriminately butchered, their patriots tortured, and their country devastated by the “Free World’s” military machine. I do not remember “The Press” raising much objection, but I applaud nevertheless your present deep concern for human life, dignity and freedom. These, however, are not the main worldwide issues. The main issues are whether the world’s wealth is going to be controlled for ever bv American capitalists and their allies, while people starve, and whether those who oppose American capitalist domination, with its brutalising corruption and waste, are going to be suppressed. This is why those who label the worldwide struggle against American capitalism as “Communist,” as you do, inevitably find themselves joining in the world-wide campaign to discredit any regime not backed by the C.I.A. This is also why a clipping of this letter will be filed by our Secuiity Intelligence Service.—Yours, H. C. EVISON. January 8. 1976.

Sir, —“The Press” has a sad legacy of a generation of edito ials supporting the most costly, bloody and futile war ever waged. Neither you nor the National Party have ever recanted and your correspondents interpreted your most recent provocation in that context. Let us lay that boge?- of Communist sympathy.l judge a government

by its performance in distributing wealth, power and freedom among its people. Stalin’s Russia was clearly the most inhuman and reprehensible in history but differed from Allende's Chile by almost as much as Hitler’s Germany differed from Muldoon’s New Zealand. Blind anti-communism may lead to a treatment worse than the disease. In Vietnam the attack on an independent Ho Chi Minh destroyed moderation, lives, families and cultures. When you show that stopping the war cost more than starting it I will admit my error. When you lead a movement to help the Vietnamese I will support you.— Yours, etc., A. L. WILKINSON. January 8, 1976. [This correspondence is now closed. —Editor.]