FRIENDSHIP WITH RUSSIA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 385, 8 November 1946, Page 5

FRIENDSHIP WITH RUSSIA

Sir,-Perhaps the Soviet Press does, as you say "openly attack Britain and America." It*does so only because the policy of the British and American Governments merits the condemnation of responsible journalists. But the impression that is sometimes given that these attacks are motivated by sheer illwill towards the British and American peoples is surely not borne out by the facts. Your readers have only to compare for themselves in a recent issue of The Listener the courteous words which Mr. Ehrenberg addressed to the American people with Mr. Atkinson’s abusive and very silly attack on the Soviet Union. Where good manners are concerned the Russians win hands down, One has only to compare the calm and moderation of Soviet displomats with the gaucheries of, say, Messrs. Evatt and Jordan to realize this. Certainly you will find no Russian using the violent and provocative lan-: guage that is used by some prominent Americans apparently driven powercrazy by their country’s possession of the atomic bomb. What for instance could be more wicked than Admiral Standley’s description of the Soviet Union as "a virtual enemy," or his suggestion that Mr. Wallace, for the crime

of modestly recommending peaceful relations with his country’s greatest neighbour, deserved shooting? After what the world has just gone through talk like this makes the blood run cold. No wonder thousands of industrialists and high ranking naval officers cheered when the Secretary of the Navy attacked Mr. Wallace, The brutal fact is that powerful sections of American business are hell-bent for war with the Soviet Union. Why. is this? The first reason is that the very existence of the Workers’ and Peasants’ State is a perpetual challenge to their claim that society cannot manage without them, The second reason is that the Soviet Union stands as a mighty bastion for Socialism and Democracy thwarting their plans for the realisation of the "American Century" -in other words, the imperialistic domination of the world by American

Capital.

JAS. W.

WINCHESTER

(Wellington).

Sir,-So " the 150 millions of Russians are deliberately isolated by their rulers from free contact with their neighbours" are they? Anyone who cared to _ investigate truthful sources of information regarding this amazing civilisation of less than 30 years, would realise the people have been far too busy with their own affairs

to have time to think of their neighbours. Unless it was to fear them, for Hitler made plain his evil intentions in Mein Kampt. Those same Russians were the only ones with constructive ideas toward a world peace. Neither Britain nor America have shown much desire for anything but the satisfying of their own greed and an excuse to abuse the Soviet Union on every possible occasion. The whole propaganda network of untruths about Russia is most shameful to decent thinking people, and historians a hundred years hence will see only too plainly that Russia was given little opportunity of showing friendship.

COMMON

SENSE

(Wellington).