Sut,—Your recent article on the Berlin Youth Festival, along with
similar reports in the daily Press, rightly point to the need for " the proclamation of some ideal more effective to command support than Communism." Does not this touch the root of most problems facing us in the world today—namely, the lack of an inspired ideology for demo- cracy stronger than the materialist ideology of Communism ? It is significant that a growing number of people in many parts of the world are finding such an ideology in Moral Rearmament, which Chancellor Adenauer said recently has become universally known in post-war Germany.
A recent book, The World Rebuilt, by Peter Howard, giving evidence of the work of Moral Rearmament, has now been published in eight languages. Student leaders from many. German universities said they found what they were looking for in this book, and, starting with one university, they decided to get a copy of the book into the bands of every student in Western Germany-152,000 altogether. Though many students made sacrifices to help finance it, they knew that the 190,000 marks needed would have to be raised from other sources, and succeeded in getting the backing of Cabinet Ministers at Bonn and in the Lander State Governments. The matter was brought up at one Cabinet meeting. The Minister of Labour, a Socialist, said: "Hitler got through because we failed to give an ideology to youth before 1933. We must not make the same mistake again."
Industrial and trade-union leaders have got behind the idea. Firms and corporations have decided to contribute : 18,000 copies of the book were distributed to the students of all West Berlin universities, 55 per cent. of whom are estimated to live in the East sector. Observers reported seeing students in Berlin trams at 6.30 a.m. deep in their reading of The World Rebuilt. "The best thing our student committee ever did for us " was one comment. Smite universities have held meet- ings of students to get further training in how to live and spread Moral Rearmament. Something more satisfying than Stalinism and longer lasting than Leninism is definitely permeating the youth of Germany with a revolutionary new life that creates greater miracles than Marx ever dreamed of.—Yours sincerely, G. ALAN THOMPSON. '16 Woodland Park Road, Leeds, 6.
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