MR. CHURCHILL’S WARNING

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 21980, 26 March 1946, Page 4

MR. CHURCHILL’S WARNING

Sir, —I always read the. interesting letters by Mr. Koherc, and am often in agreement with his views. In concluding his recent letter on Mr. Churchill’s speech, however, he made a bad error. After suggesting that Mr. Churchill was biassed against Russia by a fear of Socialism, Mr. Kohere remarked: “Mr, Joseph Davis in his book, ‘Mission to Moscow,’ expresses his opinion that what he saw in Russia was Socialism.” Mow, sir. I have just read “Mission to Moscow” for the second time and can find no argument or statement to that effect. Mr. Davis sums up his view of the Soviet system with this definition on page 395: “ . . . a system of State Socialism operating on capitalistic principles and steadily and irresistibly swinging to the Right.” Surely this is not what Mr. Kohere regards as true Socialism, being based, as Mr. Davis reveals, on bureaucratic control by the State, piece-work and competitive labour in industry, and class distinction socially. For the workers such a system entails little except a change of bosses. It is a system far removed from the co-opera-tive, personally responsible type of Socialism favoured by thinking Britishers. This aspect of Mr. Kohere’s letter I consider much more important than argumentation about the weather-vane bombast of Mr. Churchill or any other exponent of power politics and atomic expediency. “JEROME.”