nee HEY only show you what they want you
critic. Of course they do. We do the same.

so often implied, that what you
numerable chances to check up what I wa

narrative from my diary suffice.

I write in a Russian meadow.
It is 5 am. The grass is heavy
with dew. The lark sings. I am
where I could wish to be. In
the heart of the Russian country-
side, 350 miles from Moscow, six
miles from the nearest town, An
unexpected visitor, dropped unan-
nounced from the skies.
~ Our plane made a forced land-
ing last night. We were bound
from Tbilisi to Moscow. A rough
journey over Caucasian moun-
tains and across the Black Sea.
We were only two hours from
home.
observed and called attention to
a trickle of oil from the propeller
case. Then a spurt, which grew
in volume. Engineers and pilots
acted instantly. We swung around,
-seeking level ground. Not a soul
was alarmed. We made a per
fect landing on a flower-bespans-
led, breezy isolated meadow. —

Within a few minutes children |

surrounded us ‘as if they had
sprung from the ground. Peas
ant children. Bonny children.
Boys and girls, friendly and smil-
ing. Boisterous, too, when the
propeller revolved to make
wireless connection with Moscow
and sent a rush of air waich laid
the meadow grass flat. Children
struggled with the windstream as
men struggle against blizzards,
and then, yielding, were hurled

iPaci
jalan

vit srl ll

I ervrean

ee

Many had been sick, ae I

es mf

TRB E

Wiisatareene le ecveenantetttl

back. like chaff, screaming with
delight.

Girls desisted first and Baths
ered round us, eager to ask and
answer questions.

“Were the Germans here?” we
asked a pretty child of Ukrainian
parentage ,who looked 14 but was
only 12.

“They were,” she said,

“And did you go away?”

‘wo we stayed. The Germans
took our houses and we lived in
holes.”

“Did the Germans kill any peo-
ple in your village?”

“Tiney killed my uncle. He was
head man. They cut off his
hands and feet and then shot
him,” she said with childish di-
rectness.

An old man came hobbling up.

No other adult arrived and we

asked the child: “where is your
father?”

“At the front.”

“Are many. fathers at
fr ontrs .

Vien,

Looking around tne ‘eager \faces
I said:

the

your father is away.” \
Every hand, with scarcely an
exception, went uP,

i

ml

Hf ne ini

oy
(NB

iE) oy
se ah mall Me

Friday, Nevemper 28, 1947

-@ Crisis in our schools

by Bruce Mickleburgh

 @ Wind from the West
Report from France

Gls in Korea will rem

by Buel Deane

by Claude Morgan Page 11
ember Moon

s shown by what I was not shown.

“Put up your hands ifs

By

Very Reverend
HEWLETT
JOHNSON

_ Dean of
Canterbury

to see,” is a frequent charge by the
But it by no means follows, as is
see is a sham, a dressed piece. And I had in-

Let this

GE and collective farm
here is run by women and
children with a few old men.

To escape the roar of the en-
gine we wandered to a group of
distant cottages. The village lay
out of sight beyond. Some. cot-
tages were wrecked, a few were
intact. They were old and simple
and full of charm, whitewashed
and thatched with rushes, -Three
small windows on each side of
the four-square house, cased in
unpainted, weather - bleached
wooden frames with well-molded
decoration,

The garden was large with
sturdy ‘potato and marrow plants.
White chickens pecked around, A
calf awaited its mother.

We asked a pleasant-faced wo-
man in the garden if she had
milk.

.*Not till the cows come home,”
she said.

“Who tends all this: garden—
it was large—“and who tends the
great collective farm?”

“We women do it,” She replied.
“Each woman is responsible for
five acres of the common farm
besides her own private garden,
and her own farmyard.”

The woman was 45, a widow for
14 years. She had a boy of 14
and a girl of 16.

“Were the Germans here long?”

“Five months, Foot and mouth
disease drove them away. They
put a cordon around the vil-
lage.’ ’ ‘ *

ee

UST then a child came up with

a cracked jug full of milk and

the woman invited us to eat our

sandwiches in her cottage. We
gladly entered. A pleasant cot-
tage, reminiscent of Wales. A
four-rroomed ‘house—sitting room,
bedroom, brick-floored kitchen
and an entrance porch used by
chickens and humans alike.

We sat on a broad couch in the
sitting room, big enough for a
bed and covered with a rough
rug beautifully woven in check
pattern with dark rich colors of
home-dyed hemp. ‘

A white-hempen cloth charm-
ingly embroidered covered the

table. “My own work,” the woman
said with pride.

Two plain rugs covered the
spotless deal floor,

We asked the woman to share
our sandwiches of white bread,
taking care to give her the only

meat sandwich left. e

‘She ate it, remarking that she
had never seen white bread like
that in her Kolkhoz, Thinking of
breakfast, we asked if she had
any eggs. Yes, she said, and
potatoes and sour cabbage, She
bade us take breakfast with her.

Two other things struck me. A
large chest, waist high, stood
against the opposite wall. As we
talked a fine girl of 16 came
in, and selecting from the chest

a coat of modern cut
and donning it with a
red scarf around her throat,

she led the pilots to the village.
“At. what does your daughter
work?” I asked. “She does not
work, she is still at school,” the
mother: replied. Sixteen and still
at school !

In a corner behind some tall
India-rubber plants, hung around
with dainty muslin curtains, was
an ikon, a picture of Christ.

Learning that I was a minister
of religion—my dress was “lay”
on account of the hot journey—
the woman left the house and
eagerly returned with a bow! of
newly dug potatoes, lit ia fire, fed
it straw and stiff reeds, and,
heeding no remonsirance, cooked
a disnful there and then.

Three bowls, three spoons, three
forks were placed on the table—
potatoes in one bowl, sour cab-
bage in another, sour milk ina
third, and then a jug of warm
milk straight from the cow.
“Kolkhoz fare,” the woman said

with a smile.

We helped ourselves straight
from the dish with our own
spoons: crockery is scarce after
the German invasion.

A healthy meal. And that fare
with eggs from the fowl, bacon
from the pigs, and coarse bread,
accounts doubtless for the
sturdiness of our hostess who
stood before us with crimson
apron, green belt and white
blouse; a comely woman with
plaits of flaxen hair coiled up,
Russian style, on either side of
her head and peeping out from
her white kerchief which the

peasant women always wear.

She had been beautiful when
young. Her portrait with a chain

»

Mosley angers

—LONDON

BCE SH Oren are reacting
angrily to police clubbing of
pickets at the Savoy hotel and
to the police protection granted
Sir Oswald Mosley, Britain's

fascist leader, who has’ announc-

ed his intention of forming a
new fascist political party.

Several demonstrations have
been held throughout London to
protest the picket-line clash
November 17, during which police
clubbed and arrested Labor mem-
ber of parliament Arthur Lewis,
a strike leader. Meat market

men held an hour’s protest stop-

of small pearls hanging around
her neck, taken on her marriage
day, 17 years ago, hung on the
wall,

AD no war come it would have

been a richer home: the bed-
stead witnessed to that. But the
essentials of a home were there.
Security of -livelihood. Ample
private farm and garden. Her
wage for work and her share
in the proceeds of the collective
far. Her children’s future also
secured; each being educated to
a high standard. A boy of 14 and

a girl of 16 still at school. Music
and culture in the home; the boy
had his ballaika and the girl her
pretty frock. No doctor's fees.
Medical attention free. Full se-
curity for mother and chikiren in
sickness or old age. ;

The Germans gone, there was
a carefree, happy look on the
smiling face of our hostess.
There may be richer homes in
the so-called millionaire Kolk-
hozes, and there may be and alas
there are many far more miser-
able as the inevitable result of
German barbarity, but here was
scmething broadly typical in this’
simple peasant home, graced with
its well-fed, well educated chil-
dren, whose virile future is as-
sured. This is tne fundamental
wealth to retain which Russian
soldiers fought so valiantly in the
peoples’ war.

oa es ete
roared overhead at 7 am. and —
alighted gently beside our crip-
pled craft; and to Jeave the

breakfast ‘that awaited us in the _

cottage, and to miss the smile
which our charming hostess

, Would assume for her wae :

guests.
It would take a good deal to

persuade me that a forced land-

ing occasioned by my own ob-
servations had been arranged —
to “show. ‘me what they had
wanted me to see,” especially —
as it happened to be the second
surprise visit to a Kolkhoz with-
in a_ fortnight;
Armenia, where we ate our meal
with wine, bread and fruits of
the sunny south on lovely east-
ern carpets spread. ‘beneath the
cherry _ trees.

@ . This portion of a chapter
on Soviet Planning was ex-
cerpted with the publishers —
permission from the book SO-
VIET RUSSIA SINCE THE
WAR, by the Dean of Canter-

Gaer, New York, $3.00.

British people
page daily to show their anger
at “the brutality of the police
against the Savoy strike pickets.” _
-The Cooperative organ Reyn-
olds News and the National .
Council of Civil Liberties are
among those which have joined |
protests on the Mosley issue.
The British Trades Union Con-
gress has demanded that Mosley’s
meetings be outlawed. The latest
incident took place November 16, _
when police held back a seething
crowd of Londoners who came

to protest a Mosley-sponsored

rally. Several anti-fascist dem-
onstrators were beaten up and
urrested by the police.

the other in