Communists and the Devil
Must Night Fall ? By Major Tuf ton Beamish. (Hollis and Carter.
ruthless and brutal police methods—any such doubter will find a great deal of material here to remove his doubts. But what we seek is a way to destroy this danger to civilisation, and in that respect Must Night Fall ? seems to me to be worse than useless. We are to increase our military expenditure and, with the other Commonwealth countries and the United States, we are to order the Russians back behind their pre-1939 boundaries. At the same time we are reminded that "Bluff is no good . . . the ultimate sanction is war. To avoid war and preserve Christian civilisation is the task for the statesmen of the democracies."
One fears the task will be harder if there are many Major Beamishes about. Is he really so innocent as to believe that this country can be tough with Russia unless the factory-workers believe in a policy of toughness, and that they will be encouraged to do so by his attempts to prove that the Labour Party, which millions of them support, is a' Marxist Party "? Labour Ministers have said silly things in their time about Communism, just as Tory Ministers said silly things about the Nazis. But if Major Beamish believes that there is only a difference of degree between, say, Mr. Attlee or Mr. Morrison and Mr. Stalin or Mr. Vyshinsky, then he has not begun to understand the problem ahead of us. He writes as an earnest Christian ; he should therefore be able to recognise in the history of the Communists a repetition of the frightened persecution of heretics that has on occasions marred the early history of the I2s. 6d.) • NIGHT need not fall, according to Major Beamish, if we in Britain "rely on the strength of our own right arm" and "give the Christian world the lead for which it is crying out . . . God is on our side. The Devil and all he stands for is on the other side, and he is sworn to destroy us by every means in his power." It's as simple as all that. Black and white. Sheep and goats.
This is one of the most exasperating books I have read since the war, and all the more so because its author is so obviously sincere. It contains an indigestible mass of documentary informa- tion about Poland, Rumania, Bulgaria and Hungary, which will discourage any but the serious student, and even he will be ham- pered by the lack of an index. It is not the author's fault that so little of what he writes is based upon his own experience, for he has been refused visas which some others of us were fortunate to obtain (thereby, no doubt, incurring or increasing his suspicion, for eyed Mr. Attlee appears to him to be dangerously tainted with Com- munism). But the inevitable result is that the book lacks life and interest.
Anybody who still doubts that the Communist Governments obtained power in Eastern Europe by the vilest stratagems, that they have utterly prostituted justice, that they are determined to crush Christianity and that they remain in power by the use of the most Church, which was weakened less by its violent enemies than by those who supported its general aims but refused for reasons of conscience to conform to some of its doctrines. He admits re- luctantly that Tito may be a genuine danger to Stalin ; if he hopes for a more vigorous British policy he must surely also admit that a Labour Government in Britain has been an effective check to the growth of Communism.
Major Beamish claims that "the large majority of the inhabitants of the half of Europe now under Marxist domination believe in God. They also want to know the truth." If this half of Europe is intended to include Soviet Russia, I fear neither of his statements is still correct—the people have been too befuddled by indoctrination to question the Party line. But there must still be, thank God, a considerable minority in each Communist country of individuals who, for one reason or another, refuse to conform. Some refuse to do so because they are Christians, some because they are Nationalists, and some because they are Socialists who resent the way in which their belief in social progress has been misused and corrupted by the men in the -Kremlin. These diverse potential revolutionaries need all the encouragement they can get from our side of the Iron Curtain, and Major Beamish could best help by trying to understand that a profound loathing of Russian Com- munism is not confined to members of his own political party.
VERNON BARTLETT.
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