19 MAY 1950, Page 2

The Child-Lovers

It may be remembered that a number of mothers making a great parade of their solicitude for their children were prominent In the Communist May Day disorders in London. A few months earlier a young man carrying a sleeping child in his arms had been seen in'another London Communist demonstration, though in this latter case the effect was somewhat marred by the subsequent discovery that the man in question was a bachelor holding a baby supplied for the occasion. The background of the case was obscure, but it was at least perfectly clear that the man in question was exploiting one of the more nauseating lines of Communist propa- ganda, namely an ostentatious loVe of children and solicitude for their future. The truth of such professions may be tested in the case of the Greek abducted children. According to Greek accounts 28,000 have been taken from Greece, mainly in the early months of 1948, and scattered over Bulgaria, Rumania, Yugoslavia, Czecho- slovakia, Hungary and Poland. Everything about this figure has been disputed by the countries concerned—its size, the nationality of the children themselves, the wish of their parents to have them returned to Greece, and the veracity and motives of the Greek Government. These denials have been put forward with such ferocity and persistence that many observers seem to have become confused by the sheer weight of organised lying. In Yugoslavia alone is there any sign of a reasonable and objective approach to the problem. In any case the lapse of time and the genuine diffi- culty of establishing the truth of events which took place in the confusion of guerilla warfare finally made an inquiry by the Red Cross advisable. But this inquiry was only able to establish the fact that the Cominform countries refused to co-operate, showed no evidence of social responsibility and did not even reply to the invitation to attend at Geneva. These are the child-lovers.