"MISSION TO MOSCOW"

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 8, Issue 78, 5 June 1945, Page 4

"MISSION TO MOSCOW"

Sir —Your correspondent, Mr Jes-» sup like all Socialists, whose case is so hopeless that it cannot be debated adopts the defence of labelling as Nazis' or Fascists all those who dare criticise. I have never been able, to reach that high degree of intelligence of the Socialist which enables him to rightly condemn Hitler's despotism and government by murder and at the same time apt plaud exactly the same methods used by the Soviet Dictator. The only consistent thing about a Socialist is his glaring inconsistency. Will Mr Jessup deny that in the book "Mission to Moscow" the author, Ambassador Davies, states- that in Russia there is no freedom of thought or speech—that the years 1937 and 1938 (after tlie granting of the Free Constitution) were' years of stark terror —that the trials were showmanship—that what took place was a terrible political purge to remove all opposition to the one man rule, a ruthless dictatorship? Since Davies wrote this will Mr Jessup call Davies a Nazi? Was this side of the book shown in the film? Will Mr Jessup call Quentin Reynolds a Nazi for it is Reynolds who tells the story of Davies' embarrassment at the private screening in Moscow? Max Eastman once an enthusiastic Communist and one of the leading Socialist writers, who has lived in Russia, tears Davies to pieces. He states that the film is not only a distortion of the book but is full of "flagrant inaccuracies" —is ''totalitarian propaganda which falsifies history"—"the whole effort is to represent the Soviet Dictatorship as an advanced democracy"—"The film is anti-British anti-Congress, anti-de-mocratic anti-truth." He goes on to state tha't it is bewildering to him "that public champions of democracy should wish to whitewash or ignore the judicial mass deportations and state planned famines by which Soviet totalitarianism lias been established and main* tained." Will Mr Jessup call Max Sastmana Nazi? Yours etc. t J. T. McBETH.