1954-02-18 — Page 4

Page

“Unpersoning

Beria

By MAURICE MANNING

UBSCRIBERS to that been carried out, it will be bible of the Com almost as though the original munist

nover existed. Like faith, the pages had

Trotsky and others, Beria will Large Soviet Encyclopaedia, simply have been subtracted recently received an Im from history, portant notice from the publishers. This

1 acom.

Already, all portraits of him have been withdrawn, and ple-

mended that they should tures in the Tretyakov Gallery detach from Volume 5 of in Moscow in which he appeared the Encyclopaedin four have been painted over to show pages of text and a portrait Khrushchev in his place. Beria's writings are being withdrawn and substitute for these a

from libraries everywhere. corresponding number of new pages. No reason was given for the amendment, which is the first to be made since the new edition of the Encyclopaedia sturt- ed coming out.

This is the process which, in George Orwell's grim fantary "1984", depicting a totalitarian state in full development is called becoming an "unperson." An “unperson" i

la someone who has fallen into disgrace with the Party, is dead, and accord- current Party policy, Impelled by curiosity, 1 ing to

should never have lived at all. sought out a copy of Every trace of his existence Volume 5 and turned to therefore is expunged. The herd the first of the condemned of Orwell's novel, an assistant

in the In Records Department of pages-21. This contained

the Ministry of Truth, when the concluding paragraphs faced with the so-called

"reclif- of an article on the Behring cation" of a printed

report con- "umperson." coming Sea, followed by two short

just the report und blographical entries and the cancelled out

substituted an entirely fictional first part of a longer

story which he made up on the which included Д photo- spur of the moment. graph of a venerable look- ing gentleman called Beritashvili. All these en- tries began with the letters BERI.

FOUR PAGES

F

one

VERY CLOSE

The publishers of the Large Soviet Encyclopaedia. faced

A

THE

CHINA MAIL THURSDAY, FEBRUARY

"O.K., Sir-if you insist that we leave your residence the

ONE WORD

back

BADEN-BADEN. And that is how the Bar.

N impudent minx of lin conference comes o

a black princess and the picture of my'slimming.

# mousehole of a So I am most grateful door in an African to Her Royal 'Highness. (I

and

with a "rectification" of Beria's palace are really respon- surely don't have to call the biography, cancelled it out (and sible for my finding myself youngest of a king's 15 also the entry on the village in Germany just now. Not wives Her Majesty 7) which was named after him) the Berlin conference. that little door." and substituted come pictures of the Behring Sea and a few

The girl and the door be- paragraphs about an obscure tween them decided me: It German diurist. The resemblance could wait no longer. I had

method is certainly close enough. Orwell's fantasy, which to take a slimming cure.

So here I am taking the Communist critics dismissed as an alarmist's dream, was un- Kur in A Kurhaus along comfortably near reality.

with other Kur-guests. I have lost a stone in a week

In- in

You insist on know- ing how H.R.H. and that door forced me into this? An undignified story.

I went to call on the King of the Shilluks at Fashoda in the Southern Sudan. He received me in the forum of his capital, 籍 magnificent black sheet thrown like A

there

It is well have to rebuild the runway like this."

heard in

London Express Service

bathtub!) brings shadow

Hitler's

Ordnungsmacht It means that hunger for power again

SEFTON DELMER hears in an unexpected spot-what the Germans are saying about in Berlin..... the Big Four talks

But the effort to master them up with visions of the her feelings was too much victorious post-war Reich. for her. After four or five "We shall be the Ord-t sweeps she collapsed, help- nungsmacht in Europe," he less with laughter.

said. "We shall establish So here I am now in the the economic, military, and cure-house. It is a most political order for the whole impressive chateau built in people of Europe.” Kaiser Bill's best and most And he combined this costly imitation of Regency with another-of Germans architecture.

colonising and civilising

:

Superb baths and mass. Russia right up to the Urals. age rooms glow with the Another toplo for us lads most glittering modern in the bathtubs has been clinical equipment.

the armament contracts But just to make the which are just what sre place a real testing ground wanted to give a new im- of German self-discipline petus to the face of Ger- there is also a platoon of many's industrial recovery. walters, a restaurant with It is beginning to sag a bit. delicious and

There is a lot of talk hera fattening dishes, a cellar stocked with of German firms getting the best from Rhine and contracts, or trying to get Rhone, and a cocktail bar contracts for

the new That I have gone down a American bases in Spain.......... atone in seven days despite German firms are even all these temptations shows offering to accept part pay-

a a just what woman's ment in U.S. surplus, wheat.

In order to get these con- laughter can do.

Seen from the slimming tracts, the report runs.

On page 22, sure enough, staring out at me from the page opposite was the face of LF Beria, former Minister of ternal Affairs executed on December 23, 1953, on charges of trying to set his own Ministry above the Party and trying to drive

Brooding on this manipulation and I am still losing." wedge between the other peoples of the USSR and of history, I found myself trying to Imagine how the process is the Russian people, with the aka of restoring capitalism. This really carried out. Is there per- moment in was the portrait that was to be haps at this very removed,

It and

his the Kremlin, hidden away some- biography, covering practically where along an obscure passe

passage, of people keeping group all of page 22 and nearly half of a tiny

Beckoning me to follow, obviously

one eye on the alphabet and the page 23, which was

the revision,

on the fluctuations of a row of tubs filled with he ducked quickly through reason for although the publishers made political power measuring the hot foaming pine needles the narrow three-foot door from without. 'When at last no mention, in their instructions, length of various Encyclopaedia and a selection of German to his round, thatch-roofed I crushed through, a bit of could not have been

biographies, possibly even dare industrialists and V.I.P.s is palace and stood waiting to the door came with me.

It?- drafting I way

additional

or 17-seized feeling the national receive me. such subjects 03 VISHO, MOLybdenum, STAL-pulse of the new Adenauer In I ducked - and got Two wives were sitting on huge feathered goose wing

the floor forgotten Irish Germany. A

preparing a and with a fine show of actites. politician called MÁLoney?

fan tuba, I cannot blame The king tugged from special ceremonial brew of concern proceeded to

the THE OLD NAZIS Delmer 14 Bit

French or Who knows?

within, the court shoved the tribal beer for me,

Russians for having some

the

was

don other

of this point or of the identity of the person whose portrait was to be removed.

Four pages altogether had to be removed (the portrait was an insert, between pages 22 and 23), and the new entries had to be clovetailed to fit in with those

adjoining pages. For on the the original page 21 was sub- stiluted en entirely new page of raiber pointless photographs to go with the Behring Sea entry. The material formerly on page 21 made the new page 22. On the material nat page 23,

Beria dealing with

(Dr the village named after him) was retained and padded out by the addition of a 30-line biography of an obscure German diarit of the eighteenth century

culled

Friedrich Wilhelm Bergholtz, nover before Included. Page 24 corresponded exactly with the same one in the original text.

GRIM ORWELL

material on

T

or

HOW IT BEGAN BUT I am also listening and learning. For you would never believe how splendid

for

weighs löst, 2016.

toga over his ebony should- ers.

stuck,

શના

"

* DON IDDON'S DIARY ★

LOOK OUT, NEW YORK,

A MIGHTY CITY

Street station

On the front page

SEA

a cartoon looking rather

works."

+

like a child's water-colour sald

Icss

The younger

than 16

ine.

wife--she more

HERE'S COMING UP

even

the

misgivings about the future NOR do I imagine an an-

plans of this

Germany.

Adenauer

my

xious Frenchman, would' take much heart from the talk of my fellow-seeker

health, Dr von

With one exception fellow patients are support after

The doctor was in the

ers of Chancellor A. Two of Siebold. them were even financial backers of his recent elec. German diplomatic service tion campaign.

until 1934. Then he was de-

In the view of Whitehall nounced by a Nazi fellow and the State Department, diplomat and thrown out therefore, they are good of the service,

Do you think the doctor Europeans, good democrats; Germans who, like the old has been reinstated under Chicago, Tuesday. groen. It showed a youth frightened about anything, I have looked around me and President Eisenhower's stock is Chancellor himself, believe Adenauer ? Not a bit of it.

For the man who had to seemed to me as ful, handsome Senator Mc. though some citizens are uneasy I have seen free spending, big high and growing higes in peace and have given up interview him and tear his case soon as I arrived here Canthy and a dignified, about sinister, but unnamed, eating, thirsty drinking almost although Adlai Stevenson comes

The hotels, the from near these parts he is the dreams of domination in Adenauer's Foreign Office was that Chicago had not statesmanlike

"Reds and Commies."

everywhere.

a Nazi himself and a formier Senator

restaurants, the night clubs are regarded by some as a bit too they had under Hitler. changed. I got off the Com- Bricker being splattered

member of Ribbentrop's, staff, Certainly there

brilliant to have mags appeal. Tittle crammed with people.

NEXT TUB

The Nazi diplomat who had In their notice to subscribers, modore Vanderbilt at La with mud and it was cap fear about a recession-far

As I'm here for pleasure as But not by my old friend

denounced Siebold to his Nazi the publishers of the Encyclo-Salle

than in New York or and tioned "Do something pro- Philadelphia. This is the capital well as work I have toured the Marshall Field, Jur. publisher

the superiors in Berlin wes-HD- paedia recommended that the bought the Tribune. offending pages "should be cut

American and you get the of the heart-land of America, night spots. They are bigger and editor of the Chicago, Sun BUT here is what

Д descendant of tub, next to mine pointed consul In Johannesburg, and there he decoyed an anti- out with scissors or a razor.

merchant had and it sees itself growing bigger and more lavish than anything Times and

Chicago's greatest

to say one morn Nazi refugee to return to Ger and strosI ZET all the time, in New York, London or Paris. blade, keeping a margin next to

prince.

ing: the spine of the book to which

"Well, this is just many.. An accompanying report perhaps even one day out-

to lunch as I said it would be. The Marshall took me

The refugee was arrested by the new pages can be attached".

that the Bricker stripping New York.

Raw town

he and said

had Thus, once the substitution has in yellow, blue, brown, and Amendment, which wants

rarely conference is breaking down, the forewarned Gestapo and thrown Intea concentration I asked a group of business-

known a political situation more And if you ask me there's to take away the Presi- men with whom I shared a dent's treaty-making power, station-wagon along the Lake THIS is a raw town, but the interesting fighter, prod, not much harm in that. camp. There are afidavits to

police are not strict. Some Marshall are enlightened, pro-

prove all this. "is intended to prevent Share Drive: "What about the

of the dancers in the clubs and British, dead against the Bricker Rather the reverse, depression talk?"

"Eisenhower' won't wait THE TACTICS foreigners from gaining.

burlesque houses would make Amendment, strong for the control of American do- They blow clouds of cigar an Interesting study for Dr United Nations and interna- any longer now for those

tional cooperation. Britain Kinsey, I should not like to take mestic affairs.".

smoke indignantly.

mat, has been turned out by my old mother or my maiden hasn't a better friend anywhere. wretched French to agree. Do you think that this diplo

to our rearmament. He'll go anti-Nazi Adenauer? One said: "It's talk,

Marshall and his wife, Kay ahead with it whether they No, sir, he is In the all it is, talk. . America is not

about alleged antlike it or don't. overproduced, it

German diplomatic, service, under- The great stores and the small poked me

I consumed. There's an unlimited shops are full of customers, but American feeling in Britain.

"And with the Ameri- Says von Siebold The

trouble

is that the old "Nazis. EAR Colonel McCormick market right here in the Middle Instead DEAR

of concentrating on admitted there was some, but West."

winter clearances the merchants nothing to get alarmed about cans behind us we shall be have got so rauch clandestine and his ferocious

are pressing summer sales with Mr Bevan and now Mr Dribers come the power that keeps power back into their hands in. Tribune! · So

postulbly get more space here order in Europe and sets cura Foreign Office that even you were There is no doubt the boom vigour and showmanship,

than they deserve.

the tone.

men whom one would expect to frightened that "foreign is continuing here, with per-

hapa ers" were

Traffic In the city and ouf- a slight levelling-off, and

He had used to describe be anti-Nazis are cheerfully out to control the only thing Chicagoans are skirts is dense, and already the

with big-muscled, full-bellied,

that power the old-Nazi jakel willing to consider in their moet 1064 cars are appearing along

word "Ordnungsmacht"

Timming fabulously wealthy Ameri- pessimistice moments, which are the roads, My taxi-driver said,

not made has Is something called when I mentioned this: We ret TN Chicago itself there which all of us thought had me so light-headed that I fall "recession de luxe.”

things here first and we do them bright hope of even kigger died in 1945. patra, pa to recognise the Molotov tactics

boormul Now that, the St. Lawrence Waterway plan looks Harmless, that, you and strategy in Barlin to be like going through, Calcago will think? Jolly good of the Ta proerve world tension

what they are probably become the nearest Germans to want to bo 1 with its canaging exfession the Icelandera? No, Just THIS is a beautiful phrase, and that actually England was my of Amerion, drawing off huge Western Europe's school Western - economic § prosperity;" foreigners, with a sidelong 11 suppose it means a steak, home, and he brightened and businew from the Eastcoast, prefects and lord of the and” (Ang glance or two at the schem weighing three-quarters of said: "I was there in the was, in port ing British

pound, and three bourbons-and- I'm not kidding you or trying tot sistars, They Bill Bourlah, But Well, let me remind you making a grave arron Lawer pound, and Berbend of Hymouth,, illo Bogland and was 100% Chand Bastern Marches, If no one. 2 No split the Western coal-

What about crime, and gang else will take the job?

But I do think we shall ber water instead of four get able to, 1'm hak-Hrilah mobsted no longer the of the true meaning of remain blind to the

KIMENAires came out and wel-liked Here SOME PINE, town'as they, did,

myself, jouit and the Briffat!

Ordnungsmacht, which is penetrations of the the other day, saying: that sun- thing

cropping up more and more poll

machine by employment Insthe Unite

Hold

Iministrat frequently in Germanus poż

gaiss for what litical discu

ca.

Frightened

Which foreigners? The

little. Belgians; the dour

Dutch, the subtle French,

| After allow days here, I has

SANDEMAN

PORT and SHERRY

Sole Agents

DOPWER

„discovered" however;

Colonel's fepes áre not

trany: Chickafomain, Ale

1. Theresia, coni

over the

few.

that's aunt to them.

Beautiful phrase

Bigger booms

first. This city Has New York

from New York? Hoked you from New Yok

When I said I was in a way he became silent. Then T edded big deep water port to the heart.

collaboratingsumerem for the