What Way for Youth?—!
By A VISITOR-TO BERLIN
64 REUNDSCHAFT " — " Freundschaft " — " Amitie " Friendship—wherever you went, whatever you did, these were the key words of the World Festival of Youth and Students for Peace recently concluded in East Berlin. On leaving your room in the billet, at the breakfast table, in the train to the centre of East Berlin, participants were greeted with an eternal round of handshaking and the inevitable magic word for the promotion of peace—" Friendship." Even before the Festival was officially opened participants were swamped with the exuberance of the " Freundschaft " greeting, for trains were stopped at selected stations on entering the German Democratic Republic and an official welcome given by the local organisers of the German Youth Movement the Freie Deutsche Jugend (Free German Youth). Bands on the station burst into " The Song of Freedom," and the carefully roped-off pens of Young Pioneers - (aged 9-14 years), Free German Youth and civilian popu- - lation erupted into demonstrations of welcome by rhythmic clapping to the tune of " Freund-schaft," interspersed here and there with the rhythmic variation " Staleen! "
The Festival was officially declared open at the Walther Ulbricht Stadium on Sunday, August 5th. The speeches at this ceremony included one by Mr. Burnbaum on behalf of the British Delegation, which numbered about 30 at that time. All followed the same pattern and quite effectively denoted the theme which was to run through the Festival period. Anti-West feeling was to be stimulated, and this can be clearly seen in the address of the President of the German Democratic Republic, Wilhelm Pieck : " Dear friends from all over the world! The situation is extremely serious. Despite their defeats the Anglo-American warmongers have not given up their war plans. They are feverishly increasing armaments production. They abuse the force of the peoples in order to produce ever more weapons of destruction. The war bloc of the Atlantic Pact Powers has pro- duced an armaments production office especially for this purpose. The bloodthirsty enemies of mankind, the German, Japanese imperialists and militarists, are being rearmed in order to be let loose again on the peoples. The utmost strengthening of the fight for peace is therefore the highest demand of the hour.
" Long live the Soviet Union, the great example of peaceful construction for all peoples) " Long live the great leader in the world fight for the peaceful future of the peoples, Josef W. Stalin! "
Speeches, comments, and toasts at public gatherings all fol- lowed this line, and condemnation of the " Anglo-American Fascist warmongers " was further propagated by the wholesale display of cartoons and caricatures of Western political leaders.
Concurrent with the Festival was the XIth World University Games in which teams representing 42 countries took part. In spite of the fact that there was no official team representing Great Britain, a -team consisting of students of a London technical school appeared under the British Flag, and, not un- naturally, since it was competing against the sporting cream of the Eastern countries, was decisively relegated to the lowest possible poSition in the final tables.
In addition two large sporting and gymnastic displays were presented on August 9th and ,16th. The bare mention of the numbers of gymnasts taking part, 20,000, gives but little idea of the magnificence and magnitude of these displays. 7,000 people doing rhythmic exercises with hoops or medicine balls, all moving as a single entity, with the precision and seeming inevitability of a well-oiled mechanical machine, cannot fail to be impressive. But this was not enough, and even in these events some political trend had to be worked in, and a tableau- repre- senting Russian tanks was followed by a symbolic demonstration by the full complement of 20,000 gymnasts, showing how the Soviet nation would lead the oppressed black and yellow races along the paths of freedom.
In the cultural field there was a wide and varied choice, ranging from ballet and opera to a circus and various exhibi- tions. These shows were of a particularly high standard, and some, such as the Czech, Hungarian and Soviet national pro- grammes, were on such a lavish scale that they would be immediate successes if transplanted to either the West End or Broadway. Enquiries elicited the fact that one of the best ballet groups from Moscow was there, and in addition some of the best artists in the musical sphere in the " People's " Democracies put in appearances. Finance of these shows is interesting (admission to all actiyities was completely free during the Festival) for individual Governments make grants towards the production of National Culture programmes, and this amount is increased by an allocation of 15 per cent. of the trade union contributions.
The Young Girls' Day of Solidarity demonstration on August 9th was a very damp squib compared with the well-organised , mass-scale display Of The Young German Peace Fighters " in Marx-Engels Square the following Sunday. The former was under-publicised' and disorganised, but the latter had world-wide publicity and in Hollywood terminology was Stupendous, Colossal and Mammoth. A parade of a million people is something which we in this country find difficult to imagine or comprehend : when half this number is carrying flowers; banners, slogans or coloured photographs of Communist leaders in all countries (not in strict proportion, for there were abOut 100 photographs of Stalin to every one of other Red leaders) and liberally interspersed with men and girls in yellow, brown, blue, red or white gym outfits, the whole presents a moving, living ribbon of colour. For the first hour this kaleidoscope is interesting, but as time passes the reiteration of Anti-West slogans and the seemingly never-ending stream of the same por- traits bores one, and for the last five hours boredom reigns supreme. But this is only for the onlooker, and the participants in the parade were completely indifferent to the fatigue involved, for to these people the demonstration was a re-affirmation of previously expressed faith.
I found myself regretting that some of our more pompous politicians could not be present to observe this parade. The air was electric with fanatical fervour, and the voices of a million young Germans reiligiously chanting the, name of their leader, Stalin, might have, shaken some of them out of their state of complacent torpor.- The Hitler Youth Movement was never like this. Then there was a German-mationalistic strain being played upon, but now we find adulation lavished upon the leader of another country, and converts to this creed are not limited to the Eastern part of Germany. It would be foolish to attempt to minimise the importance of the Youth Movements in the Peoples' Democracies. The F.D.J. has members of all ages, and while membership is not compulsory, "iris better to be a member."
However, it is not in the F.D.J. that the greatest problem for the Western Youth Organisers lies, for in the Young Pioneer Corps we see a move to indoctrination at the earliest possible age. Just try to imagine a huge camp of several acres, with a stadium, football, .hockey and netball pitches galore, living accommodation for 20,000 youngsters, with boys and girls from all over Germany meeting there. From the time they get up in the morning, when they take part in a flag-raising ceremony in front of a 20-foot photograph of a Communist leader and receive the slogan for the day, such as " Forward to Peace under the Leadership of Josef Stalin," to the time they `go to bed at night, repeated instances of the glory of the Soviet Union are put in their minds. The fervour of these children, amounting to almost a religious fanaticism, is frightening: they know of me other regime and, from the negative policies of the Western Youth Authorities they will have little or no oppor- tunity of broadening their outlook. Even the old adage about " the British lose every battle except the last one " gives little solace in this instance, for in these matters we are losing all along the line, and this particular battle is one we can ill afford to lose.
Originally the British would have consisted of three types-1, the Communist Party members ; 2, the ideological peace-lovers ; and 3, the interested, or curious, non-Communists. The patent Government policy of making travel difficulties drastically reduced the number of the latter category, and I would put the percentage of non-Communists that eventually arrived as low as 1 per cent. The Communists got through en bloc, and regrettable incidents at Innsbruck merely served to strengthen their case. An interesting feature of the Innsbruck affair was that it con- verted some of the previously a-political people to the Com- munist cause. Conversely, one student with previous Communistic leanings was so nauseated by the regimentation, the incessant lauding of- things Soviet and the virulent propaganda against the Western democracies, that he was turned into a violent anti- Communist. At the peak there were some 1,200 British at the Festival (including 30 Scottish children at the Young Pioneers' Camp) and the majority of these will return to Britain even more convinced of the righteousness of their struggle. In spite of the missionary zeal of these people this does not constitute a major threat here in Britain, but in Europe the position is rather different. What can be done about the enthusiasm of the F.D.J. and the Young Pioneer Corps ? So far American and British policy has been to inculcate a type of British or American democracy into the German people. They do not want this. They are used to having a leader who promotes their innate national fervour. I would submit that the answer to these two movements is the formation of ,a democratic youth movement in West Germany, fired with imagination for the real rebirth of the German Nation.
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