HUNGARY
SIR,—Permit me to make one comment to Mr. Bryn Thomas, whose letter you published in the issue of December 27.
I make no comment on Mr. Thomas's statement that public-transport fares are lower in Hungary than in England. They are. I accept Mr. Thomas's statement that a three-room flat with kitchen and bath plus security of employment amounts to "liberty.' I do not question his statement that there are no unemployed actors in Hungary. It may well be so. Nor do I question Mr. Thomas's assessment of the talents of Julius Hay and Tibor Dery and
their companions. He probably knows the language well enough to judge them. I have only read them in translation.
But Mr. Thomas claims to judge a nation by the way it treats its working class. 1 quote from the 1949 Constitution of Hungary. 'In the Hungarian People's Republic all power belongs to the working people.'
The working class, then, in Hungary is not 'treated' in any way at all. It is the source and wielder of all power in the nation. It rules the nation and the country. But I accept Mr. Thomas's word that the Hungarian working class is ruled and not ruler, and I agree that he may judge the Hungarian nation by the way it treats its working class.
I do not know where Mr. Thomas was during the Hungarian uprising. I was in Budapest. The people I saw fighting were working men and women, soldiers of the Magyar army, students and school- children. They had apparently plenty of small arms with ammunition and some anti-tank guns and mor- tars with a few tanks. The defenders of the Dictator- ship of the Proletariat had many hundreds of tanks, troop carriers, heavy artillery and aircraft.
A people that is happy and contented, is ruled by its own representatives and is convinced it is running its own affairs does not go out into the street with petrol in glass bottles to fight T54s and the might of the Red Army. No rabble-rouser, no matter how fiery and persuasive, will ever make human beings go against tanks with bare hands for nothing.
No amount of smart talk is ever going to get round
that simple fact. —Yours faithfully, SARAH GAINHAIVI Paul Clemenstrasse 1, Bonn, Germany
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