Were You Embarrassed?
Occasionally one reads a strangely insensitive comment in the British press on the subject of modern totalitarianism. Such was last Sunday's editorial comment in the Observer on Mr. Khrushchev's visit to Copenhagen, where he was received in the streets with the same contemp- tuous silence that greeted him in London in 1956. To the Observer the Danish public's cold shoulder 'ought to send a shiver of embarrass- ment down our backs. For this is how he was treated here during his 1956 visit . . . the hostility and suspicion in 1956 were remarkable. Somehow people assumed that, by welcoming Mr. Khrushchev, they would be endorsing Mr. Khrushchev, they would be endorsing Commun- ism. . . .' But, of course, the people of London who have long been known for their love of liberty and hatred of all forms of oppression, thought no such thing. They were just registering their disapproval of the man who was a leading Stalinist until March 5, 1953, and as such the representative in 1956—as now--of a regime that, the Third Reich apart, has destroyed more human beings than any other in history. When Marshal Haynau, the suppressor of the Hungarian rebels in 1850, visited London, the Spectator reported that in Southwark he 'was surrounded, pelted, struck with every available missile and even dragged along with his mous- tache . . . while onlookers cried "Down with the Hungarian butcher."' Ordinary people in this country, as this anecdote shows, just don't like tyranny, no matter from which direction it comes.
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