THE CHINA MAIL TUESDAY, JANUARY 5, 1954.
A TOUGH YEAR FOR THE COMMUNISTS
T
By JULIUS GOULD
Lecturer on Sociology at the London School of Economics
11
by
up-
been
on
adminis-
tration, grotesque economic "planning" have brought Mos- cow'a puppets a load of head- eches.
We heard the first rumblinga in 1932 when the Czechoslovak Communists made Slansky and
the Jews the scapegoat for their own oconamde bungling By June 1983 the rumblings had become a thunderclap. Pizen (Pilsen) on June 1 secem of a big riot staged by Czech workers against their Cr mastera. A fortnight later, on
the
June 17, the East German workers
revolt which was put down rose in a courageous but costly
Soviet tanks.
by
HIS year 1953 has been mean a change of heart? See year. Tyranny, bad
n tough one for the how things have gone. Communist lie In February, Stalin was alive machine. Old frauds have and Beria a pillar of the regime. been exploded by events; namelers crimes "admitted"
The world was being told of the new frauds have borne less the Moscow Jewish ductors. By fruits than ever.
July, not only was Stalin dead but Berla was under arrest. And Take some big examples, what of the Moscow doctors?
now free, First, an old fraud-the lies Well, they are
hach right citizens who about "germ warfare" in legally"
induced to confess! Koren. Remember the For the first time there was a Communists' line on this? It oursion that Soviet "Justice," Interpreted by the Secret was their main theme song for months on end. It was Police, had miscarried seriously. And with this admission yet an- the big-lie technique on #ther Secret Police chilel has been global scale. Every third- vanquished
the Moscow rate Communist speaker, struggle for power. every gullible follow
Stalin's hels dropped acme of traveller. knew Moscow's his craziest plans and promised, "evidence" by heart. It was ambiguously, that a "new course" imminent. For example. a massive attempt to seduce was
Could there be clearer proof world opinion-an
attempt when the Moscow doctors were
released.
we heard a lot about of the loathing with which Mos- Bro regarded-or that failed.
cow's dupes the seed berties of the Soviet
value which the azen and of the need to safe of the true Now that the Communist wit fumed them. 1: i now clear Kremlin places upon the oft-used In Korea is ove:
en see that this. Lika
promised phrase "national independence"? wist Moscow's "evidener" S large-scule amnesty,
was pro-
The executices, arrests and really worth. Feen the prison paganda to impress opinion at hells of North Korra. Balish home and abroad. In essere reprisals go on in Eastern Ger- American prisoners of war sehing 1109 changed. The many; but they ignore the roul
And have been released.
causes of the June 17 revolt - with Scerot Pelice remain under new the
food shortage, fuel crises, truth
ex- them they brought
leader; the Cetremunist Party, in about "gen-warfare"; the uth alliance with the police and the
asperation beyond measure with the ruling clique. June 17 was extorted by army, maintains its fron gilp. about "erfessions"
a warning signal that Stallri'a Commun
the truth cuards;
palley throughout the satellites about brutalities rarely equalle i even in Hitler's war. The "gem-
Was leading to econcenic ruin anch political chaos. Su the warfare" cla: ge is BON Been
brakes were put on The
nonser se degrading always wILY.
and
1
the
Unchanged
#0
ོན་
"with the "sacred collective leader- prine ple of Another example". Take the Phip" of which we are told Jatest phase of the Sovic
Stalin sworship has Pratich For months cease, and we now hear of the "ease" cipari geri Moscow played a typical double virtues of "collective" rather
the than "individual" gime, bu at no point has
leadership. Yet what can "collective leader ship" mean so long as the drame work of the Sovitt State remains unchanged with power in the bands of the self-appointed few? that Here
strategy of expansion bech dia. carled. The old line of subver sion was still being emphasised at the WFTU congress m Vietna in October
On Offensive
The underground war of in- trigue and inditation gues of the Moscow-Inspired Criranunt parties are everywhere on the olfonsive. But at the diplomatic level the Soviet have talked of "peace" and "negotiation" And the ne they talked about "negotiation", the more they re- fured
negdinte
to
perifte Issue!
on any
By late November the fness had played itself to a standst
The Russiare had stalled 100 long! Worli opinion was harden- ing nguinet then. So They changed their tune and agred to Four Power talk, 1s tria a new stage or just a new tacti- cal fraud? The year 1934 may give the answer.
On
the Communist home front, in Ruesia at Easter Europe, there has also been 0 change
tune. But does it
Headaches (BAYER
Toothaches
Colds
are quickly overcome, by
CAFASPIN
THREE
•
Root Causes
of
are
b
While yielding nothing their political power, the Com- munists in Eastern Europe frankly admitting appalling i takes in the economic field. In East Berlin, irt Prague. 20X Rudapest, Communists
(not "Fascists"!) admit that the collective forms were forcibly organised; Communists admit Industry is "bureaucratic" Ineffelent. Hungary, In
"civil Band with નામ "Uberles," it looks as if verbal they even admit the use of con promises merely cloak the same centration
And camps!
have old grim realities.
out piously in favour of come the "rule of law"
And how grien Stalin's Russia secrmy to have beent Vart in- efficiency on the farms; gross in difference to consumers' required tastes;
rigid orthodoxy in culture and the arts-all this is now ofically revealed
Few woukt envy Malenkov the social ventions he inherit;
49 in
the of a
In the domestle, foreign flek. the drauds deerde have recolled on the Communist Powers. The new "easy" policies reveal the ten- sions created by the old. Surely 1953 stood out as the year when These stresses became
Lurbear
The ratellite States, too, have sbie. And who can believe troubles gutore throughout the that they have gone for good?
IT'S
SUMMER ON
THIS
STREET
From William Hamsher
Bremen, minules I felt I was standing in HE "street of perpetual Middle East sunshine. THE
here-the summer" is
first heated thoroughfare in Europe.
Along came the Bremen family Luebbering, Frau Luc- bering in a fur coat, and two and a half-year-old Gabrica in fur-tipped hood. They gazed came fur
And it is gaining almost a monopoly of Bremen's shop-up astonished. Of
pers.
ceat and hood.
Its designer, 33-year-old Herr
Along came girls in sleeveless Martens, or gas engineer, sald
happy quite the iden Jumpers, "with a little development window-gaze on this cold
that he is certali
can
10
day
be applied to clear even London with their overants over their
arnis.
In South Africa Dr. Malan's grandchild lays the foundation stone of a coloured university to spread Suitable knowledge such as that 3 million Europeans outnumber 300million coloureds and that coloured people like being pushed around
PROPHECIES FOR 1954
OLD LOW'S ALMANACK"
World Cupuriens by arrangement with the Manchester Guardian
The Stuff That Britain Breeds
T
I WISH THE CYNICS COULD HAVE BEEN
WITH ME THAT NIGHT IN BURMA
By JOHN DEANE POTTER
HIS is
A as good a ten-hour battle against Mou The younger Wavell played with story as any I have Mau terrorists. He was leading a special hook and handcuff on ever heard to uplift the Black Watch,
the patrol of his old regiment, his left band.
when they They both came from a unique the hearts of came under heavy fire. Earl line of British soldiers who have Britons as
history turns Wavell was shot dead,
run like a golden thread through the page
of Coronation
the pattern of our history. There And with him the proud title have been Wavells in the British Year.
Wavell of Cyrenaica, created for Army his soldier father seven years Field-Marshal ago, disappears.
It is no less of a tale be- cause it concerns the death
For 37-your-old
Major Earl
on unmarried, and there are
heirs,
of a THIN called Earl Wavell of the Blackt Watch was Wavell, who was killed Christmas Eve.
по
I wish
The title started when his the cynics who
father, with a sprinkling of men criticise the British Army and outnumbered five to one, could have been with one night in Burmu 1944, when first Archie Wavell.
me sent Marshal Graziani's Italians In scuttling across the desert of
Cyrenaton in North Africa. met
He had arrived only that day by plane from India. He sat silent in the bamboo hut filled with zooming mosquitoes which was a Chindit mess.
While he ate his corned beef from a tin plate he read a copy of T. S. Eliot's verse.
It was from hope that the planes and gilders flew into the Wingate Jungle fortresses astride the roads and railways in Jap-occupied Burma.
The volunteer
The poet
many generations and
• The President of the Methodist Conference begins to catch up with the Archbishop of Canterbury in hitting the front-page headlines.
L
SOPER'S SOAPBOX
By MARY HEWAT
On Drinking.—I don't, think
ONDON'S most scription have weakened the promising newcomer resistance of many young people in the battle for the to temptations which othewise
they would have resisted. headlines is a challenger in Q® Smoking—A messy habit the People's Oracle class. Dr and a waste of money. I uned Donald Soper, 50-year-old to smoke, but I gave it up-I
don't enjoy it president of the Methodist Conference, earns bigger alcohol is the Dovil in Solution, and blacker type by but it causes a great deal of i speaking his mind.
misery. It is no uso saying "it In the past few months is all right in moderntion." Shall "Soapbox" Soper has hit we have arsenie in moderation and murder in moderation? A the front page by thing must be intrinsically good criticising: THE QUEEN to bo ali right in moderation. (for going to the races), Wine is just the juice of the PRINCE PHILIP (for play rape gone bad.
On dancing Con Christians ing polo on Sundays), THE dance? As one cleric said, some ARMY (in Kenya), can,
and some can't. I don't GAMBLING (anywhere), think there is any great danger and by revealing that he has to our sexual morals. It is too worn his bathing togs to much like violent exercise these days. But I don't like the sur- church under his sult.
roundings and atmosphere of (Ho has been saying similar many dance halls, things for about 25 years-but less publicly. Now in newspaper libraries he has graduated to the large size cutting envelopes-- still columns behind the Arch- bishop of Canterbury, who rates 11 envelopes, but soon due for a box to himself.
Jazz fan
How doce such a man as Dr Soper find his own recreation?
He is an expert on the lin whistle. He can "make a nolso" on most wind instruments. And he is fond of jazz as of clas- sical music.
One of his organists at Kings- way Hall was an African, Fela to Sowande, who used to play with "Fata Waller.
Why does Dr Super lay down the law on every subject from horses to hanging? What does he hope to gain?
"I don't expect people
with agrca
me," he says, don't mind being attacked. But don't tell me these things not my business. They
"Church leaders are supposed to lead. If they expect me to keep my mouth shut, they've got the wrong ron."
Likes
Dr Soper
are.
a fight
"Ho was a most austero are organist during a service," mys Dr Soper. "But off-duty wo used to have some Memphis- style ducts."
has been opening his mouth in public exhortation with such enthusiasm that a singing voice which started as
a deep tenor has now become basa.
He is a big man, athletically built, with greying hair, horn rimmed spectacles over penet→ rating grey-blue eyes, and Wavell's father
colourful taste In clothes (yellow waistcoat red and yellow silk tie).
was a general.
It was Wavell senior who listened carefully to a long- haired, starry-eyed officer colled Orde Wingate, who propounded the then ridiculous idea of lead- ing columns into Burma after the Japanese had occupied il
The adventurer
numbers
of
He decided to be a preacher when he was 13. "Pure concelt" he says. "I thought I could do the Lord a good turn."
Dr Sopor 1kes books-philo- sophy and detective stories. Agatha Christio ranks high. Ho enjoys the cinema (including Quo Vadis and Roman Holday) and the theatre. He plays table tennis, and "scullery" bridge.
The only bridge game that is any use is the one played so remember fast that you can't the mistakes."
The secret?
of his and onco
At school he played cricket, hockey and boxed. At Com bridge he was captain college cricket team, played hockey for the Univer- elty. Now he wanders around a tennis court," likes surfing and watching soccer.
Ho likes a bit of a fight. He He is married, with "a beauti- admits that he feels "a certain ful wife, four lovely daughters, unchristian glee" in getting the and a grand-daughter," lives in best of an argument with his a two-storey house in Hamp hecklers at open-air meetings.
stead Garden Suburb. forceful His preaching
And he says; "My daughters don't Young political candidates have always agree with me, I been advised to listen to him, may be able to say what I like "not to learn what to say, but on Tower Hill. But at home, under the monstrous regimen how to say '12"
Early this year force met of women, I cannot say a word. force. Two of Dr Soper's op-
Is that Dr Soper's secret? Are ponents knocked him off his his bitter attacks on war
his stric- platform at Hyde Park Corner capital punishment, and paid £1 fines for the pri- tures on the Queen's recreation, vilege.
bis declared desire to lead, a reaction against rule in the ΠΟΝΤΙΟΥ
Pie in the sky
not
and
Not likely. No man who is really henpecked ever admits it." Is he then a headline seeker
sky when you die. To make the with public opinion, make the
He was created an earl after
WAS in New Delhi at the he was recalled from his post as Viceroy of India
time and the future seaned by the Attlee
black with swarming Japanese. Government because he grimly in his red stone palace did not even
sat High-ranking officers at G.H.Q. in New Delhi refusing to give
bother to talk about Wingate's crazy India
plan. Dway without proper Wavell told him to
go ahead safeguards.
with his Chindits.
came to Imphal on the Who Burma border to
to see us Chindita off on our fast forlorn expedl- tion? Floid-Marshal Wavell.
Wavell understood Wingate was characteristic of him because he was
He Is a Socialist and a Pacifist. the sort that when Mountbatten was eccentric adventurer soldier
His views are usually extreme. because ho likes the glare of appointed to do the things he which the British
On the Church in Politic-notoriety? Army pro-
Again not likely. had refused to do he never gave duces
Those who tell the Church to Straight publicity mongers sing Ir surprisingly large his point of view,
keep out of politics talk non- their songs in bolter harmony every generation. He was, after all, a disciplined Wingate always carried
sense. Religion Bible a soldier, whatever office he held. and a volume of Greck verse in
But there
was a similarity his pocket. That was the sort In Bremen, Herr Martens con AN officer had just flown back and an unorthodoxy about both of soldler Wavell appreciated. obtain unlimited gas at 2d, a from the beleaguered citadels the Wavelis, father and son, When Wingate returned cf the town's medieval cattle cubic metre, Sow Street, with of White City and Broadway in which made them the type of propound ils theory of the burners every ten yards of its the middle of Burma. He told soldier which no other country jungle fortress, it was Wavell As Herr Martens and I talked, 60-yard length, costs 2s. Od, an the table of the constant savage but Britain produces.
who listened. women thoppers entering the hour to heat,
infantry attacks made by the The military
swogger was Wingate's Idea was to land At a height of Bit. the burners street suddenly stared upwards
Japanese on our positions. missing, they never wore uniform Large airborne forces.
if they could help it. They roads and railways in Burma to The gingery, jut-jawed young seldom talked about their real paralyse 110 Japanese com- major looked up from his book job, which was fighting. to
munications. They would travel and asked: "What is it really
There
interests ond be were other
entirely supplied like?"
olceer to their hearts. In the by air. The field-marshal saw Wavells It was the sound strategy of it. His son saw the high adventure. He new
off
embattled to join the Chindits.
Field Marshal Wavell realised the expedition would not be
49y. But
then Wavell knew
of smog, fog and mist."
The real name of the street is Sow Street, and it was once part
market.
The
burners
from
as they fell the sudden warmth, shed ther warmth over a radius and to a pavement audience he of ten yards. explained the whole thing.
Herr Martens would like heat comes rom gas export his experiment to Britain. shoppers overhead. They have "With
walk in everlasting sun- without flame give off heat rays, shine in Central London," he
It is a vast improvement over said. the old-fashioned gas fires, he Bays,
new ceramic elements which, could way apparatus
One difficulty Herr Martens
has not yet resolved: How do
I took my hat off under one you avold colds when you finally
burners. After a few step outside the heated zone?
of
the
SILENT
SALESMEN
真賣麵
Largest Morning
Largest Afternoon
Largest Bunday
Circulation Sala
Cireulation
·Ciroulation
The officer from the jungle case of the replied: "Extremely nolsy. Why poetry. do you want to know?"
Young
1
to
across
Wavell carrlod volume of T. S. Ellot with him. Said the major: "I'm flying His father always had a book In tomorrow."
by an older 'post called Brown- The other officer sympathised ing. with him and sald: "I can't think. Field-Marshal Wavell pua that things were never easy why you're going. They've got lished an anthology of verse when you went to war. all the majora
org they want there called "Other Men's Flowers" in He himself had waged several 1944. When did he compile it? bitter losing battles, the sort of
at the moreplied shyly, “As As a relaxation during some of battice which would have ruined
Dhe major
a matter of fact I volunteered, the bitterest days of the war.
I dropped a rank in order to get
in. I'm going in as a captain.”
He then shut his book and
walked out towards his tent.
The other offoer tipped down
a
tin mug of rum and lime and
said:
The golfer'
A man like that ought to WHEN they were not reading
poetry in their Jelsure mo
havo his head examined,'
ments, both father and son wrole
A colonel looked across and verses,
said:
"You know who that is, But this was not the only don't you? It Wavell's soc
similarity between them.
the reputation of any other, general.
But the whole Army realis
if anyone could have won these battles. It
would
have been Wavell.
The Earl
kingdoms of this world into the Kingdom of Christ, things must be done at the political level, or they
will not, in
be done at all.
I'm no bully ·
80.
Is he just a Big Ead, a measurable meddlesome crank who wants to time,
On Capital Punishment The and make people
pry into everyone's private life live his way Christian Church should con- rather than their own? demo this archala and un-
Some people will say Christ-like example of bar-But he is more than that. barism
He does want people to think On War.-I would rather see his way. "Of course I do. But a world overrun by Communism I want to persuade them to than third world war. And I think my way, not bully them. detest Communiam,
To do that I must arst of alt On Vice-Christians should make them think. not be surprised if o mixture of paganism and rational
That is what I want to do.
con- Make people think."
KEY JOB, BUT A
RISKY
NE the
ONE
From RALPH HEWINS
Stockholm. officially disclosed. But he was world's most personally installed by Russia's No. 2, brawny Nikita Krushchev, of the Com- munist Party, Stain's old job. Krushchev personally travelled to Leningrad to do so.
Ozardous jobs was planted a Secretary
has
on an obscure Communist party official named. Feodor Kozlov when he became chairman of the this he took on the Leningrad Soviet the other day. They AFTER His father was then Viceroy of were both called Archibald, They greatest batile of his life.
This is a key job inside This was not Just party India. Two days Inter Captain
routine, but to give weight to Winchester and the Viceroyalty of India, It Russia, but Kozlov's an Archic Wavell had his hand both went to
entered Slown off fighting the Japanese, Marshal Wavell lost an eys
the Black Watch. Field- brought him on epridom
not appeared in any of the re- the appointment But the earldom which began cent lists of Party,
Sipte at
and Kozlov's predecessor. V. B. Now Archle Wavell Earl Loos and won the M.C. His son on a battlefield
Provincial officials, in Africa has
Andrianov, Wavell since his father died lost a hard in Burma and won ended on another African battle-
his predecessors were the Halim Polepointed by "Chief Lavrentă three years ago-has been killed the M.C.
nold,
of "St
"Stalin's
successors." Beris. So It appears that Malon fighting the Mau Mau in Kenya.
Major Wavell look a year No one would have understood They were: Andrei Zhdanov, kov and Krushchev are tighten- off to complete a blography of better than the first earl way founder of the Cominterm, who ing their hold on Russia's second his father before he went to his only son died on Christmas was officially reported to have Kenya. He never finished the Evo doing his duty.
aled of heart failure and then Leningrad, Feter the Great's story of the "man" be so much For he ched published a poem Jewish doctors in 1949; Sergel always been hard to Lame. With
to have
**murdered" by "Window to the West has called "A Sonnet. for the there was ever s man who Neither allowed his disabili Madonna of the Cherries,""
Kirov, whose sanssination by a Its four million people, looking could have had a cushy job ties, to become a handicap. Just last two lines fil
student in 1994 touched off the on to the sea and sorosa the in the Army. Ik wou Wavell... But efter, the war thes won a for all that loveliness, that great purges and helped Stalin Iron Curtain, Leningrad remains on. Chelstmas Eve, while other father-and-son golf competition. warmth, that light, then to supreme power, the Watak problem for the Kremling people were drinking and enjoy. And they only had three eyes · Piawed Madoma, I go back to *! What exactly has raised Koz- it was there that the Red Ing themselves, he was fighting and three arms between them, -- fight, 22:
lov to his pinnacle is not Revolution broke out in 1917%
The fighter
resembled.