A Spectator's Notebook
Hungarian Tragedy (Dennis Dobson, 5s.), by Peter Fryer, late correspondent of the Daily Worker in Budapest, is a book which all woolly liberals with a penchant for fellow-travelling should read. To anyone who has always suspected Communist dictatorships of being tyrannies much of his news will come as old stuff. Still, it is a good thing that one Communist journalist should be incurably addicted to the truth—an uncommon ailment, as Mr. Fryer's dealings with the Daily Worker show. Mr. Fryer, in fact, is an honest man who knows a massacre when he sees one, and he speaks for us all when he denounces the lies with which Soviet imperialism has tried to hide the truth about Hungary from its own and other peoples. There must be many like him in the British Com- munist Party, who refuse to recognise the reality of Russian totalitarianism until the dead lie at their feet, and it seems to me that -there is a certain confusion of mind apparent in his determination to continue a Communist in spite of every- thing. He has said that 'if the price demanded for his readmis- sion is silence on Hungary, that is a price he is unwilling to pay.' But the price demanded is obedience, not only on Hungary but on every other subject. To suggest that there can be any bar- gaining on discipline is to show an extraordinary naivety—even for somebody who has been a party member for fourteen years.
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