Newspapers and the Soviet Union

Press, 24 April 1984, Page 12

Newspapers and the Soviet Union

Sir,—A sense of disorientated unreality is the all-pervasive impression with which one emerges from a reading of Illingworth Mackay’s letter (April 21). His belief that New Zealand’s newspaper industry “is emerging as the champion of the Left,” can excite only consternation or derision, depending on how seriously it is regarded in editorial offices. The real purpose of the letter would seem to be infecting editors with Illingworth Mackay’s own strain of anti-Sovie-tism. We are, indeed, in greater peril than we were in 1939, but from the United States, not the Soviet Union. The United States military doctrine of “limited nuclear war,” our alliance in the A.N.Z.U.S. treaty, and placing our ports at the disposal of its nucleararmed warships, puts us in danger of Soviet retaliation should the United States ever exercise its firststrike option, which it refuses to renounce, the indispensable condition for its nuclear war plans. — Yours, etc., M. CREEL. April 21, 1984.