Dear Sir,

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 4, 29 July 1946, Page 4

Dear Sir,

Letters to the Editor must be clearly written on one side of the paper only and where a nom-de-plume is used the name <?f the writer must be included for reference purposes. The Editor reserves the right to abridge, amend or withhold any letter or letters. TRUTH STAMPEDED Sir, —I must congratulate you on your editorial for I doubt if in any age there has been such a distortion of history and fact as has occurred in our present age. The truth has become a lie and a lie has become the truth. We have reached the stage where the people are not to be permitted to be told what Mr Boswell, Minister to Moscow, reports about the economic conditions prevailing in the U.S.S.R. No one would expect that reports concerning international policy or diplomacy should be made public but it is of the utmost importance that the people should understand what has been the result of the Socialist experiment in Russia for we are proposing to adopt the same economic system and the whole case for Socialism stands or falls on the Russian experiment. Mr Boswell’s report is obviously so adverse that the Government dare not publish it. In other words then, it confirms the Maloney Report and that of Citrine, Hubbard, Eastman, Eugene Lyons, all of whom believed in Socialism and cannot possibly be accused of writing capitalist propaganda. Truth is not propaganda and it is the truth that must be told and not concealed. Propaganda on a scale never thought possible has hypnotised the world into believing that the introduction of socialism in the U.S.S.R. brought great material benefit to the common man in Russia whereas the truth is that it lowered to a very marked degree the very low standard of living which existed under the Czar. The truth must be told and conveyed to the public through the greatest instrument of enlightenment which we possess, namely, a free Press for when freedom of Press goes then there can be no truth. Yours etc., f , • “ONLOOKER.”