COMMUNISTS.

Evening Star, Issue 23527, 16 March 1940, Page 14

COMMUNISTS.

TO THE EDITOR* Sir, —We hear a lot of talk about putting down Communism, that “ canker ” of our present civilisation, such as closing the “ red ” bookstall in Broadway, and blocking meetings, but as yet no mention of stopping the publication Of the ‘ People’s Voice,’ wnich is openly sold in many news shops. The paper’s main planks seem to be:—(1) Stop the war and sending men overseas. (2) An absolute heroic worship of Comrade Stalin and Red Russia. (3) Steady attempts to belittle the heroic fighting of the Finns against Russia. Verily the old saying is true: Socialism, the mother of Communism, and Communism, the mother of Anarchism; and Anarchism is the end of everything.—l am, etc., March 15. Te Kuri. TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —The report of the last meeting of the Returned Soldiers’ Association in Dunedin, giving expression to their emphatic condemnation of Communism and those in this country who subscribe to its poisonous doctrines is widely appreciated by all those who believe in freedom and democratic government. It was most fitting that such condemnation should come from our returned soldiers, all of whom went through hell in the last war to preserve the blessings of that freedom arid form of government. It is only during the last few years that Communism has reared its ugly head in this country, some importations from abroad encouraging its growth. Communist Russia,. by its outrageous and brutal attack on gallant little Finland, has horrified the world. After this our disloyal Communists should hang their heads in shame. The interests involved to-day are tremendous, and the ultimate issues are important to the whole world. It is a question of the right to live as free peoples, and to ensure this Hitlerism and Communism must be destroyed. All honour and credit to those loyal workers in Great Britain,-with her dominions and Franco, who are carrying on a‘ determined struggle against this threatened intolerable despotism. The references in public reports and letters made to those Communist intelligentsia m responsible sheltered public positions make it a bouuden duty on the part of those members of councils or other public bodies in whose employ they are, to hold an inquiry without delay and deal with them summarily. To shirk this duty is to show cowardly acquiescence in a discreditable state of affairs which is occasioning resentment and a public outcry. We owe it to those who are giving up everything and going to offer their lives in support of the great cause of democracy to see there is in the community, wherever found, an immediate purge of such wreckers. —I am, etc., March 14. Loyalist.