TO THE EDITOR LETTERS
COMMUNIST TECHNIQUE
Stn,—Mr. Woodhouse is right. Communist technique is quite different from Hitler's and it is time we realised it. The Communist technique is essentially that of imposing ideas. Communism is spread as early Christianity was spread, by proselytising. It is for this reason that since its early days the Kremlin has tried to build up a. quasi-religious back- ground. Lenin's tomb, for example, was set up to create a "holy place" for adherents. In the Italian elections the Pope's approach was the right one. He confronted quasi-religious ideas with religious ideas. HiS tag : "God sees you in the polling-booth ; Stalin doesn't" seems crude to our western ears, but it was addressed partly to a peasantry neither learned nor sophisticated. It hit the nail plumb on the head.
To stop Communism we must oppose it not with the threat of war, for "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church" and, as Mr. Woodhouse says, the atom bomb will make more Communists than it kills ; we must oppose it with ideas. The rape of Czechoslovakia, while it spilt no single drop of British Communists' blood, lost that party more influence than any other single act. The Communist-inspired strikes in France were broken some months ago by the popular revulsion against a fatal railway disaster due to the strikers. These events laid bSre the barren cruelty of the Communist ideas, and we in the West uncon- sciously compared them with what we in Christian lands regard as normal. It was this comparison of ideas which lost the Communists influence. We must show that our ideas are better than their ideas. This may be a task for the Christian Churches, but if not it is a task for some, in many ways, comparable body which may even have to be brought into
being.—I am, Sir, yours faithfully, ROBERT NOTT. London, S.W.1.
Previous page
