AN APOLOGY

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 52, Issue 32316, 20 September 1943, Page 3

AN APOLOGY

TO SOVIET CHILDREN BY RUSSIAN WRITER X YOUNGSTERS NEGLECTED “A few days ago. looking through my correspondence. I found a letter written in large block characters, some back to front as though reflected in a mirror,” writes Samuel Marshak, the famous Soviet writer, best known for his children’s books. “It was illustrated with drawings in red, blue and green pencil. Black snipers were perched on green trees. Red and black fountains of explosions spurted up by a road under a shower of bombs. In the top right-hand corner tiny, ant-like infantrymen besieged a green mountain. “In that very beautiful letter I found a reproach. My six-year-old correspondent asked why I, whom Soviet children consider to be their own special writer, had spent the past year writing only for grown-ups in newspapers, in magazines and on posters, why all my latest books were for grown-ups and not for children. “I am still faithful to you. little comrades, for whom I have been writing fairy tales., songs and funny books all my life. I still think about you very often. “But to think of you is to think of the future. And it is because I think of the future that I have to devote myself wholly to a writer's war-time work, and must continue to write for the grown-ups who are fighting for the happiness of children. The enemy, who dooms both grown-ups and children to death and slavery with equal indifference, must be destroyed. “We send our greetings to our friends and allies in North Africa. Thousands of miles still divide us. but we are confident that we and they, by common sacrifice and common effort, will together win the victory. “Then we will return to our peaceful ways and I will pay my debt to my young comrades, for whom I have written no gay fairy tales for such a long time.”