LECTURES BANNED

Manawatu Standard, Volume LII, Issue 72, 24 February 1932, Page 12

LECTURES BANNED

RUSSIANS IN'LONDON. London is more *>r less compelled te tolerate Russian butter and wheat and the fiery denunciations Russian demagogues in Hyde Park, du when the anti-Christian propaganda or the Soviet trickles through tho of its University it is too much ( a London correspondent). The line mus be drawn somewhere, after nil, for, although British broadmindedness causes gratified astonishment among other nations, it has a limit. . That limit was reached when complaints were. made, the other day, that a series of lectures being delivered in the London University Union Hall were frankly permeated with anti-Christian thought. lne complaints proved to be so well founded that the University authorities, indignant that their courtesy had been so unfairly exploited, promptly put a‘stop to the lectures, which, by the way, were being given as a sort or corollary to an “Exhibition of Education in Soviet Russia,” in the hall. Organised by the Education Workers Guild and the Society for Cultural Relations with the. Soviet, the exhibition was chiefly remarkable for its display of wallnewspapers,” which the proverbial blind man could nave seen, were sheer propaganda. These were, in reality, merely posters setting forth the many doubtful subjects that are crammed into the heads of Russian children. By means of vivid illustration and glaring captions, they blared. forth Communistic exhortations to the young to hate capitalism and eschew religion. One depicted a colourful scene entitled “On the Athiest Front,” and another told the beholders very baldly that “Religion, is opium for the workers.” To emphasise that latter point,_ a _ schoolboy was shown shaking his grimy fist at a cowering priest. The intriguing question, however, was not the objectionable nature of the exhibition, but how it ever came to be staged within the precincts of a historic British University. An official of the University Union explained the mystery by stating that the union was a non-political organisation, which saw no preliminary objection to hiring out the hall for an “educational” exhibition. Judging by subsequent developments, the non-political opinions of the union nevertheless received a rude shock, for it was impossible to reconcile a neutral attitude with aq exposition so brutally propagandist to purpose and effect. Most members were heartily glad, therefore, when a period was put to the lectures, and were even more joyful when the wall-newspapers "ceased publication.”