COMMUNISM AND PEACE Snt,—In your leading article, Communism and Peace,
you allude to the " persecuted minorities " in East Central Europe: I think it is rather from habit that the word " minorities " was used in this case, by analogy with the pre-war conceptions of racial or national minorities. The fact— confirmed by all impartial sources—is that in no one of the countries of East Central Europe do the Communists form a majority of the popula- tion, and that they can maintain their rule in this part of the Continent only by suppression of freedom and political terrorism. In my opinion, there will be no peace in Europe or the world while the Communist armies stand on the Elbe, the Danube and the Vistula. This creates not only a political, economic and psychological tension, difficult to sustain for long, but also—what is still more important—helps to increase Soviet power in a most dangerous way: The grave warning uttered by Professor Hromadka, the prominent Czech representative, at the World Council of Churches in Amsterdam, should certainly not go unheeded. He most convincingly stated that even if the West waged a successful war it could not cope with the population it would find today in the Soviet Union after thirty years of careful and remorseless •indoctrin2.tion in a materialist philosophy. One can hardly imagine the result if the West allows Moscow to absorb in addition more than a hundred million European Christians.—Yours
278 White House, Albany Street, N.W.x.
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