THE REVOLT IN HUNGARY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 913, 8 February 1957, Page 5

THE REVOLT IN HUNGARY

Sir,-In his reply to my letter on the Hungarian revolt, S. W. Scott like many late life converts, political or religious, has gone from ons extreme to the other. He’ now believes that the Russians are completely wrong and that the Hungarian rebels are completely right. It would be most surprising if this conflict is quite as Hollywood as all that. There are always two sides to any question, unfortunately we seldom get the chance. to examine the facts until the events are long over. Mr. Scott has followed the usual practice of accepting the facts which support his belief and rejecting the others. He tells us, for instance, that it is impossible for any quantity of arms to get into Hungary from the west, because border control, by the army presumably, is too good. But he then asks us to believe that this same army gave its arms away to the rebels, since "almost to a man" it supported their cause! He can hardly have it both ways. The exact part played by radio propaganda is of course very difficult to

assess, but those people who have poured many millions into this work must feel that they are getting some return, As for radio propaganda being "decisive," well that is-Mr. Scott’s idea, not mine, but it is plain that he has little idea of the vigour or extent of these transmissions. No one doubts that economic forces played a major part in the revolt, but the Hungarians are surely not so simple that they got themselves killed merely to make indignation in the west. To any reasonable outside observer it was patently obvious that they had no chance against the Red Army, without outside help. Or are we to believe that Moscow organised the revolt as a sort of training exercise, or as an excuse to indulge in a blood purge? ._ In asking me to examine the facts more clearly Mr. Scott really means that I should accept the particular set of. facts he uses to bolster his beliefs, and reject all others. It’s fairly plain that even if he has changed his opinions he has stuck to his dialectical method. Finally, with an extraordinary assumption of infallibility Mr. Scott says that he has taken off his political blinkers, and asks me to do the same. To me it seems that he has merely changed them for a pair of a different colour.

STUDENT

(Wellington).