Ilya Grigorevich Ehren-burg, editorial staff of Izvestia:

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 369, 19 July 1946, Page 21

Ilya Grigorevich Ehren--burg, editorial staff of Izvestia:

"I want to say to you why I am here among you. This will be the best explanation of everything that may come later. I have been a writer, and I am still a writer, but once I wrote novels about love. I would like again to write novels about ‘love, but life for many of us has forced us to write about other things and, instead of love, to cultivate hatred.

"I want to talk to you about Fascism, because Fascism is, unfortunately, not yet history. We cannot look upon it as something that belongs to the past. In the summer of 1936 I saw for the first time in my life how children’s blood runs on the pavement of streets. That was in Madrid. My good and dear friends, there are among you’ fathers whg will understand what it means to any man to see | the blood of children on the pavement of big cities. Since I saw it, I have taken part in the struggle against Fascism in other places. That struggle still continues, "I don’t intend to tell you about the sacrifices and the efforts which my people have gone through in our struggle against Fascism. My country was in many areas destroyed. It is extremely: difficult at home to find a family to-day around the table of which there is not an empty place. That is the price of our victory. : "IT am sincerely glad as a man-and all humanity means to me what it does to you-that the terrors of war did not aa. (continued on next page) —

RUSSIAN EDITORS IN THE U.S

(continued from previous page) come to your country, as it did to mine, but I would like you to remember what Russia went through in 1942 and 1943. I would like you to remember Stalingrad. We fought for our own soil; we fought for our own’ country ‘and for our fatherland, but we also fought for all of culture. If we had not stood "in 1942, there might well have been no culture in Western Europe or any other area of the world. It was that in 1941 and 1942 which moved the Russian people, "Our army with your army, and with the armies of the English and the French and the Yugoslavs and other allies, have beaten Fascism and the Fascists on the field of battle, but Fascism is not beaten for good. There are no frontiers, and there are no customs guards on frontiers which can stop Fascism so long as it still remains. Fascism changes its clothes; it changes its lipstick. IT have been in different cities of Europe, and I have seen it in new disguises. It still exists, and we must defeat it. "Our weapon is the pen. In 1942 Red Army soldiers came to me and told me that the fountain pen was my rocket gun. They told me that writers must destroy Fascism morally. The soldiers had done’ their share, their job on the field of battle in defeating Fascism, and they challenged me and other writers to do ours in conquering the microbes which might still spread or maintain Fascism. "Fascists are of different varieties, and it is difficult sometimes to tell them apart. Some like beer; others like wine. Some people like Franco; other people like the King of Greece. But I recommend that there is one test by which you can tell Fascists. They are people who with special bitterness hate the Soviet Union. "T think that exchange of information is good. What does it mean? Don’t we print in Russia a great deal of what goes on here in the United States? It may be that some sensational news does not get published in Russia, which might not interest every Soviet reader, but the political, social, and economic life of the United States is described in the Soviet press. "I would like to make one very personal and individual statement. I ‘am not an editor, but a writer. My paper wanted to underline its sense of the importance of this conference by sending me here, and therefore I should speak my mind. I believe that the exchange of handshakes is important, but the exchange of points of view is even more important if we are going to protect ourselves from the enemies who almost got us once, "I think it is possible that at times our papers have criticised the United States unfairly, maybe unfairly from our own point of view. Newspaper writing is not scriptural writing. Editing is a hard job in every country, and mistakes can be made. I want in all true friendship to say to you from my heart that there is no malice against America to be found in Russian papers. Maybe there are mistakes, just as there may be and are typographical mistakes, but there is no malice and there is no slander. I wish that you could say the same of your press in regard to my country, but sf any one of you should say it to me, I would look at him carefully."