IRON CURTAIN OPERA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 944, 13 September 1957, Page 11

IRON CURTAIN OPERA

Sir,-The letter from Bill O’Reilly in your issue of August 30 is an excellerit example of how a Communist reasons things out. The late Charlie Fox is alleged to have been an admirer of the Imperial Soviet Union and its subjugated neighbours, the so-called "people’s democracies." He bequeathed £6000 to the New Zealand Players. Therefore the New Zealand Players are in duty bound to be admirers of the Soviet Union’ and its satellites, If by word or act they prove to be otherwise they are guilty of a flagrant misuse of funds, and are possibly in the. pay of American capitalists! Long ago the Communist hierarchy defined the central dogma governing the new morality: whatsoever helps Communism is good, whatsoever hinders it is evil. He who is not with

me is against me. Ll suppose even a men bearing the ancient Celtic name of O’Reilly has a right to imagine any land held in the grip of Soviet Imperialism to be paradise. But if Bill during the past decade had not been so busy meditating on his earthly paradise, as a watersider he could not have failed to notice the arrival in this country of such large numbers of refugees who had escaped from his own paradise. And who are these people? The big capitalists who had been exploiting the workers, and from whom the Soviet forces had liberated them? Oh, no. They are ordinary working people like Bill O'Reilly, people for whom the big American — capitalist cares little, but for whom the big Soviet imperialists care less. They

could open Bill’s eyes for him, if he could persuade them to talk; but they cannot believe that Soviet agents are not still at their elbows.

TOM

COUSINS

(Wellington).