7 Clarence Road, Moseley, Birmingham 13
From Commander Edgar P. Young Sir: Robert Moss is unduly kind, I think, in his review of David Caute's book The Fellow Travellers (January 27). For the author, who professes to be a historian, has been unpardonably careless in his quotation of ' facts ' and shamefully tendentious, even unscrupulous, in the way in which he has twisted these to suit his argument.
As regards myself, for example, he describes me (p.184) as having
"embarked on a tour of Eastern Europe with credentials signed by Harry Pollitt sewn into the lining of his jacket." Yet he was in a position to know, since I had been generous enough to place a mass of my correspondence, etc, at his disposal (see footnote on p.220), that I went on this tour with credentials signed by Viscount Cecil and M. Pierre Cot, the joint presidents of the International Peace Campaign, an extension of the League of Nations Union, to mobilise support against Hitler, and that I had asked Harry Pollitt for his help only after the Labour Party has refused to grant me any credentials, although I was an endorsed Labour candidate for Parliament. Then again (p.195) he describes me, with obvious ill intent, as "writing anonymously as the Yorkshire Post's naval correspondent," although he must have known that at that time (1940-1941) naval correspondents invariably wrote anonymously.
It is when he writes about postwas developments in Eastern Europe (pp.283-286), however, that he has most disgraced himself, and had produced a story which might well have been written to order for the American CIA or the British Foreign Office or Transport House.
He writes sneeringly of me, for instance, that "as an eye-witness of the 1946 elections in Bulgaria I had seen no evidence of terror or intimidation," notwithstanding the fact that my testimony (which I stand by) was in common with that of scores of other eyewitnesses from many countries, including notably M. Philips Price, then a Labour MP. His evidence to disprove me that " in fact twentyfour electoral agents of the Agrarian Party had been assassinated, while opposition leaders had been condemned on the eve of the election" is based, in the first place, on a lie published in the opposition newspapers, which were freely published and circulated throughout Bulgaria at the time (I have copies of these somewhere in my files). The credibility of these may be gauged by the fact that the same newspapers were having the effrontery to publish simultaniously reports that they were " suppressed," a patent absurdity which was quoted in the Times as a fact, by the special correspondent, Hugh Seton-Watson, who went through south-eastern Europe a few days ahead of me, and which was then quoted in the same opposition newspapers as " confirmation " of their allegations — I pointed this out in a letter which was published, to its credit, in the Times.
Nearly everything which I, and many others, are criticised by David Caute for having written or said about Eastern Europe has been endorsed by the late Doreen Warriner in her authoritative book
Revolution in Eastern Europe, published by the Turnstile Press in 1950, which is significantly not included in Caute's 'Bibliography.' Edgar P. Young 101 Clarence Gate Gardens, Clintworth Street, London NW!
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