YOUNG VISITORS TO BUDAPEST
Sta,—I also am an undergraduate who attended the Youth Festival at Budapest—one of the unfortunates who, not being reactionaries, had no chance to change their pound notes on the black market and conse. quently were unable to patronise the " intimate " cafes. Instead, we spent our forints in Nep buffets, where, for sixpence, we could buy long white coffee, topped with an inch or so of cream, and, when not so occupied, observed the Festival and the people. This appeared to us to be a sensible thing to do, since we had come to see the Festival, and we thought the ordinary people, who had voted in the present order of things, were best fitted to tell us about it. (I must emphasise, however, that there were very few of us who had come wearing rose-coloured spectacles. To think that an Eastern European cow, imbued though it may be with Socialist enthusiasm, is superior to a Western, is just as silly as to think, as certain of Mr. Pickthorn's blue-spectacled friends did, that the gardens would be uprooted and the shops emptied immediately after the Festival.) I would suggest that a block of new flats, or a bunch of intelligent. looking, enthusiastic apprentices who, not so long ago, had been "dead- end kids," is a more inspiring sight than would-be emigres living in the past ; and that it is with the people building and planning for tho future that we should fraternise, and not with the war-wishers. There is something sadly wrong with them, and the psychiatrists undoubtedly
have a word for it. Going among the people and meeting the youth of Other countries, we learned much of their way of life, and told them much about ours. We learned many facts and figures—and there was ;wisdom to be learned, too. One small portion of wisdom we came by bad its humorous side. In Budapest, our autographs were in great demand, and at first we were rather puffed up with pride. Later on, we learned that the children " swopped " specimens with each other, and that the current rate of exchange was six English for one African auto- graph. A new theory of racial superiority ? Not a bit of it: simply the good old Law of Supply and Demand
Apart from one policeman, I never once saw anyone even approaching irritation. The policeman was one of several attempting to hold back a crowd outside a theatre one night. The crowd were pressing forward, and the policeman, purple in the face, was swearing roundly at the crowd, t'svfho were giving back quite as good as they were getting. So much for the Police State—and the policeman outside 60 Andrassy Utca has y autograph and I have his. Incidentally, why, one wonders, the flushed tones in the café when referring to this place ? One could no 'more miss it than trip over a cow in broad daylight. As well might a Londoner ask a visitor: " Are you a member of the Labour Party No ? Well—sh !—I'll tell you where St. Paul's Cathedral is."
We, the 90 per cent., have happy memories of great courtesy ; of 'tremendous concern for our comfort, shown by the ordinary citizens of Budapest (our interpreters worked themselves almost to death on our 6half) ; of thousands of Hungarian youth—also visitors to the capital— who walked everywhere so that we should be able to ride in tram or rain ; and of healthy children, as happy and rosy and chubby as any in this country. If to appreciate these things Is to be a Red, who would
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