Utterly Absurd
SIR,---Mr Pat Sloan sees no need to withdraw any- thing he has written on the USSR (June 3). That is his affair. One would think, however, that his stubborn refusal to retract any of the numerous patent falsehoods purveyed over a long period of years (three of which I have quoted) is unlikely to enhance The credibility of his present-day utterances.
As regards the subject under discussion. I am happy to see that Mr Sloan, for all his equivocations, misquotations and half-hearted denials. has only reinforced the validity of all my statements. I am particularly obliged to him for having reproduced pari.of his argument in favour of purging Ghana's libraries of 'subversive' material. Your readers are thus enabled to gain an insight into the kind of 'information' Mr Sloan was dispeising to the Ghanaian public. in this case the assertion that 'imperialism' determinedly purges its own libraries of Subversive publications. Mr Sloan. of course, knows perfectly well that this allegation of his was completely untrue -otherwise he would hardly have invited readers to look tip library copies of his own hooks.
Having made my point. both in my original article and in my reply to Nit- Sloan's first letter, 1 consider it entirely unnecessary to enter into a controversy over such hair-splitting sophistries as the precise semantic distinction between 'building socialism' and 'moving towards socialism.' or the definition of 'doctrine' (for this latter I would advise Mr Sloan to consult a dictionary). Such a controversy would indeed be 'utterly absurd.'
-LIBOR S7AMUELY Department of Politics. University of Reading
[This correspondence is now closed.—Editor, SPI7CTATOR.1
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