EINSTEIN'S POLITICS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21641, 6 November 1933, Page 8

EINSTEIN'S POLITICS

Apologists for the Nazi Government of Germany have found difficulty in harmonising its treatment of Professor Einstein with their assertion that it haß been erroneously charged with persecution of Jews. Einstein's account of what happened to him has had to be accepted as true, for in addition to the trustworthiness of his public statements since he became a refugee there have been explicit corroborations by others—and no denials by the German Government. That treatment was startlingly severe, to put the fact mildly. Not only was he compelled suddenly to flee the country long honoured by him as the chosen home of his epochal service to science, but his house was wrecked and irreparable damage done to his collected material of research. Unable to discredit facts so circumstantially attested and so influential in .arousing foreign resentment, those overzealous in defence of the Nazi Government have said that it was because Einstein was a Communist, riot because he was a Jew, ho was thus treated. In support of this view, certain alienations were made about his declared sympathy with Communist propaganda. He has now made clear answer to these allegations. The British Labour Party dissociating itself from Hitlerism, published what Einstein has described as a revealing pamphlet, "The Communist Solar System." nnd this has given him an opportunity to say where he has stood and now stands. In a recent issue of the Manchester Guardian appears, consequently, a letter from him. "Like other Intel-

lectuals who feel it their duty to serve the cause of human progress to the best of their ability," he writes, "I have been the victim of a misunderstanding as to the true objects of certain organisations which are in truth nothing less thun camouflaged propaganda in the service of Russian despotism." In earlier ignorance of their true purpose, he proceeds to explain, he took no steps to prevent the use of his name by the "Workers' International Relief" and the "Anti-war Movement," or the abuse of it by similar organisations. To this frank acknowledgment of his misunderstanding of seemingly innocuous organisations he adds his wish to state "I have never favoured Communism and do not favour it now." He protests that the menace exerted by these organisations resides particularly in their misleading of sincere friends of human progress and real freedom. "In my opinion," he avows, "any power must be the enemy of mankind which enslaves the individual by terror and force, whether it arises under a Fascist or Communist flag."