A Spectator's Notebook IT IS NOW one year since the
Hun- garian revolt and its brutal suppres- sion by Russian tanks. No doubt history will find reasons to excuse
the Soviet leaders for what they did —they were certainly the prisoners
of their own difficult position—but I don't think that I shall ever forget waking up on a Sunday morning, switching on the wireless and hearing lmre Nagy's appeal to the civilised world. Now, I gather, the scars are disappearing on the Budapest boulevards, many of those who fought on the barricades are dead and more are in prison. So life goes on, and, as Sir Winston Churchill has said, the grass grows over battle- liel is but not over the scaffold. Of course, some People will forget anything. How abject are those Left-wingers who, because of the Russian satellite, are ready to lie down on their backs with paws in the air waiting for Mr. Khrushchev to scratch their stomachs. Reading the Dean of Canterbury's letters to The Tittles, one would imagine that Buda- P2St had never taken place. Statesmen who are Prepared to murder and massacre are bad enough, but what are we to think of those who applaud from the safety of the most privileged seats in the arena? Despicable is too mild a word.
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