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New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 294, 9 February 1945, Page 5

Sir-The article from the Observer states generalities without basing them on historical evidence and uses certain "tactical tricks" to put across its attack on Communism. It plays upon certain attitudes and prejudices which the author knows will be fairly common: (1) That the Communist movement is directed from Moscow. (2) That Communism had an equivocal attitude towards Nazism. (3) That "patriotic ardour" is new to Communism, and that in Poland Communists "have openly clashed with the national-interests of their -- country." (4) That Communism has no set principles, merely using "tactical tricks" to gull the people. (5) That Communism is "irresponsible and up to a point indifferent towards the real needs of social progress beyond Russia." In the second place, on the stylistic side, the author uses emotive and coloured language which, on the one hand, drives home his attacks by its appeals to prejudice and emotion, and, on the other, damns-even when it appears to praise. Your editorial of January 12 — "Report and Facts"-attacks the "purveyors of pap" and the correspondent who has "no guide but his exuberant

imagination." "We don’t pause to analyse absurdities,’ you say. Apparently not. For anyone who had read that editorial would have expected you to treat the article on Communism with reserve, to warn readers that it contained half-truths, errors; and prejudiced statements. But no. Not only do you give the article your blessing in a paragraph introducing it, but you write an editorial in which you draw for your readers the very implications, calculated to develop prejudice and misunderstanding, which the author no doubt hoped would be drawn. Your references to the "plotting, mistrust, fear. of liberty, equality and democracy," your statements that the Left aims to keep power out of the hands of the multitude, and that the Left believes that the people must lose their liberty to gain it, indeed the whole tone of your editorial, show that forsaking of sound judgment and critical standards which I had believed The Listener stood for. Finally, you apologise to readers for not at the same time giving them, in fairness, a picture of Reaction. Surely the fair thing to do was to ask someone who knew something about Communism to write an article in answer to the Observer one. Truly, the people should know what games are being played in their name.

JASON

(Palmerston North).

{Our correspondent has misread the Observer article, misquoted it, and misinterpreted it. That we understand. We do not understand why he should have made the picture so much more unkind to Communism than it was origin-ally.-Ed.] ‘