COMMUNISM IN CHINA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 552, 20 January 1950, Page 5

COMMUNISM IN CHINA

Sir,-I would like to ask "Thy Neighbour"’ whether he has any idea of what Communism is and what Communism teaches. Apparently he has not, on his own evidence, the slightest conception of what this the greatest of all heresies tries to instil into the hearts of poor bewildered people. I give him the benefit of the doubt and imagine that he is one of those goodhearted people who do not realise the issues involved. If your city was in the grip of bubonic plague, would you not try to protect the lives of your fellow citizens by medical or preventive measures? Would you not warn them of the means to avoid infection? If you would do this, and I have no doubt that you would, why not take the same precautions with the bubonic plague of class hatred which attacks and destroys man’s most precious possession, his sanctity as an individual, a rational being with body and soul? Chinese Communists, German Communists, Russian Communists are all the same, for Communism knows no national barriers. Here is what Karl Marx says about the Communist doctrine’ on man: *"The idea that every single man in the world has value, is the essence of democracy, and democracy was born of a Christian notion that every man has an immortal soul. We deny°a man has a soul, we deny , man has value." I quote now from Lenin: "In Communism every form of ruse, deceit, lying and knavery is permissible." I quote from Stalin’s The Principles of Leninism: "Communism is founded upon violence which recognises no law and is restricted by no duty." Surely these are solid foundations on which to build a freedom-lov-ing world and to establish an era of world peace! I ask "Thy Neighbour" to examine the evidence and form’ an unbiased opinion not obscured by false sentimentality.

W.R.

F.

(Auckland).