| weeks.

=§ILYA EHRENBURG

4 MOSCOW.
=e Deutsche Allgemeine

mat Zeituns published an
sie: by a certain Michel
: izt entitled “A Greater
“me.” In this article a
| ean is out to prove to the

Gus that they are not high-

FB bbers but the guardians of
Qj 2an culture.

ert recently the Germans
ths Cf lJebensraum for them
scam Loday everything is sup-

ee ted by the epithet “Huro-

There is no word which

more despicable and blas-
Us coming from the lips of
han fascist than the beau-
[ame of Europe. The con-
. which by dint of human
Tum and labor was transformed
: blossoming orchard has
rained of blood by the Ger-

ie recently they brazenly
Nem 2 at the prisoner. Today
E dlers assert that they are
mm ly the saviors of prison-
tome he wolf is shouting that
Zuarding the sheep flock,
=m25 of cities, devastation,
f@> converted into barracks
meen 1S€0nS, Savagry, ignorance,
m8 > extinction—that is what
* ny has brought to Europe.

mei German jesters would
ive the world believe that
Germans are defending
© against Great-—Britain and
it is hard to suppress a
—Goebbels protecting Euro-
fculture from the heirs of
peare, Himmler Saving
"s freedom from the people

Tformation Bulletin of
Oviet Embassy in Washing-
Vises that Mikhail Sholok-
*aoted author and a Lieu-
Colonel in the Red Army,
a short leave n his small
ck village on the Don after
ing a contusion in a forced
landing.

has completed a third of
7 nGvel to be called “They
Rat for Their Native Land.’

= 33 S

Army guardsmen are shown attacking the enemy in
les between the Russians and Nazis have been raging in this region for the past

who created the Magna Charta.
Who would dare to deny Britain's
richest contribution to the trea-
Sure store of Huropean culture?

Just as ridiculous are the at-
tempts to counterpose Russia to
Europe. We saved the forefathers
of contemporary Puropeans
from the invasion of the Nomad
hordes. We saved the grand-
father of the idiotic Michel from
Wapoleon’s “Greater Europe.”
We are saving and will save our
contemporaries—the children of
Europe — from the jackboot of
the German evil.

In vain are the Germans try-
ing to include the enslaved coun-
tries into their concept of a
“Greater Europe.” The Hitler-
ites assert that the French,
Czechs or Netherlanders cannot
get along without German guar-
dianship.

The Fritz is perplexed. Why is
it then that the robbed peoples
do not thank him? Why the
widows of men ordered to death
do not greet him?

1 es A LETTER from France, the
German George writes to
Lieutenant Franz Herold, ‘France
still slumbers and much effort
will be required to awaken her.
Last week three attempts were
made at assassination, two of
them near a ‘soldiers’ movie
house.’ The wounded soldiers are
in hospitals.” ...

~The blockhead ascribes the
struggle against the invaders to
Jack of consciousness. He is
amazed that “slumbering”
Ffenchmen are killing German
soldiers.

Another Fritz
Prague: “Odd

reports from
people, these

i New Sholokoy War Novel —

Wone of the characters of his
magnificent “Quiet Don” volumes
appear in this new novel whch
deals with the present war.

Sholokhov’s own home was de-
stroyed when the Nazis reached
the Don at Veshenskaya, the au-
thor’s village. “The Nazis ap-

proached close to the village—
only the Don separated us,’ Sho-
lokhov said.“ But they failed to
negotiate the water barrier.”

the Kuban Valley.

Fierce

pe

Czechs—they are ready to tear
us to pieces.” ...

The Germans shrug their
shoulders; what strange prison-
ers are these who hate their jail-
ers?

It is now two years that the
Fuehrer’s “Greater Europe” has
been unable to cope with the
guerrillas of Yugoslavia. The
struggle of the Franc Tireurs is
rising in France, while in Africa
half a million Frenchmen under
the banners of the Republic
are preparing to set foot on their
native soil.

HE Germans know now that

they are alone and that no
one will save them from retribu-
tion. What are the Germans con-
soling themseles with ? A “BHuro-
pean ~ Wall.’ They took some
suspiciously “neutral” journalists
on a tour of the Atlantic coast,
obligingly demonstrating to them
their pillboxes. They want to
convince, if not others, at least
themselves that the _European
coastline is protected by an in-
surmountable wall.

It is impossible to fortify the
entire coast of Europe from
Tromse to Pireus. And a place
for the landing of troops will be
chosen by the Allies and not by
the Germans.

| Ep the genuine Europe,
is conducting an offensive
war against Germany. It is the
brigands who are obliged to de-
fend themseles. For the time
being they are resisting far from
their lair. But it is not a ques-
tion of miles. In the course of a
few. weeks the Germans covered
hundreds of miles from Aachen
to Bordeaux, from HEidkunen to
Luga. But despite their long
months of effort, they could not
pass 500 yards over the ruins of
Stalingrad.

The rout of the Germans in
Tunisia is a notice: the war is
knocking at the gates of Ger-
Many. Germany is a besieged
fortress. Of course, it is still very
strong. Of course, the defenders
of this fortress are capable of un-
dertaking sallies. If the Fritz
will now creep forward, it is sole-
ly because there is no way back
for him. Thus the flams of re-
tribution are rising over Ger-
many.

Future--Not Futility

J. B. S. Haldane
writes on the value of
scientific thought in
reply to an apostle of
futility.

By J. B. S. HALDANE
(Fellow of the Royal Society)

LONDON.

I HAVE just been reading
Prof. G. H. Hardy’s “A
Mathematician’s Apology,” in
which he states the case for
pure mathematics as a life
work. He regards himself as
essentially an artist, creating a
peculiar kind of beauty, as a
musical composer does. He be-
lieves that his work has no prec-
tical value. This is probably true
today. But experience suggests
that fifty or a hundred years
lieves that his work has no prac-
tical use, when much of our ex-
isting applied mathemates is as
out of date as that used by Drake
for navigation.

He then makes the remark-
able statement that science in
general is of no use except for
specialists. “Tt is useful,” he
writes, “to be tolerably quick at
arithmetic. It is useful to know
a little French and German, a
little history and geography, per-
haps even a little economics. But
a little chemistry, physics, or
physiology has no value at all in
ordinary life. We know that the
gas will burn without knowing
its constitution; when our cars
break down we take them to a
garage; when our stomach is out
of order, we go to a doctor or a
drug store.”

Foreign engineers who brought
Over complicated machinery to
the Soviet Union were often hor-
rified because the workers in-
Sisted on taking it to bits, even
if it took a month to put it to-
getber again. This meant a de-
lay in starting production, but it
meant that the workers were
able to mend the machines if
they went wrong, and often to
improve on their design fairly
quickly.

Soviet intellectuals are mostly
drawn from the ranks of the
Manual workers, and proud to
show that they are still capable
of tackling skilled jobs. Clearly

‘Hangmen

a society of this kind can switch
over from peace to war, and will
Switch over to peace again, much
quicker than our own, quite apart
from the fact that there are no
landlords, capitalists and other
vested interests to impede thesee
changes,

In that kind of society, if not
in our own, a moderate acquaint-
ance with science will be of prac-
tical use to everybody. But scien-
tific education also has a moral
value. A child studies English
literature, and learns what to
write about Wordsworth in order
to get a school certificate. He or
she may think that Wordsworth
was an intolerable old bore and
humbug, but if his or her future
depends on a certificate, this
view must be kept dark.

History does not do so either,
though historians do their best
to justify “good men but bad
kings.” A scientific education,
provided it is a real education
with practical work in which the
pupil gets a chance of makins
mistakes, rubs it into you that
good intentions are not enough;
good technique is needed as well.

This is why Marxism is rightly
Called scientific socialism. It is
based not merely on an analysis
of the breakdown of capitalism,
and what is needed to replace it,
but om a study of how social
changes actually do occur. Be-
fore 1917 it had not had an ade-
quate experimental test.

But Lenin, Stalin, and their
collaborators, have given it the
test which every scientific theory

requires, and it has proved to.

worl in practice. No wonder that
Marxism is spreading among
scientists to an extent which
alarms Many people.
“No wonder also that reaction-
aries imsist on the moral value
of a classical education, that is
to say an education in which the
test of correctness is tradition,
not experiment. They also do
their best to make scientific edu-
cation, especially in schools, fit
into, the same mould, and some
teachers succeed in making bot-
any as dull as Latin grammar.
Scientific education is largely
useless unless it teaches one to
make one’s own experiments and
observations, and to trust in
their results, and unless it is
linked up with the actual prac-
tice of industry, agriculture ,or
medicine. If this is achieved,
there is plenty of room for the
literary and historic side of edu-
cation, too.

Also Die’

Superb War Film

Hangmen Also Die—an Arnold Pressburger Production

O* of the early scenes in Hangmen Also Die pictures a
solitary man, running away. Soon you learn that this
man has killed Heydrich, the hangman. But you learn some-
thing else, too; you learn that this man is many men, his

struggle, the struggle of all men
who love freedom, and his act
the act of an entire underground
movement.

In this alone lies the greatest
strength of what critics are call-
ing the greatest war picture ever
made. There is none of the usual
Hollywood superman stuff, the
“hero” angle, where some one
character is bigger, braver, hand-
somer and cleverer than the rest.
The struggle is not that of one
individual, against another—or
group of individuals. There is
no glamorous blond to be saved
from the clutches of death in the
last reel. In Hangmen Also Die,
no one man, but the entire peo-
ple, play the role of the hero.

The story of the film concerns
the death of Heydrich, and the
eventual end of a Czech quisling

who, after coldly betraying the
people jis himself betrayed. It
tells, too, of the incomparable
unity of the people, the so-called
“little” people, the ordinary, law-
abiding citizens, who prove their
greatness by their unrelenting
battle against the Nazis.

The acting is of a consistently
high standard. Brian WDonlevy,
in a type of role that is new to
him, is superb as the doctor who
kills Heydrich. Alexander Fran-
ach, as the Gestapo detective,
Surpasses his portrayal of a
Similar role in Joan of Paris,
Gene Lockhart plays the quisling
to perfection.

« “Hangmen Also Die” has been
described as “the sereen voice
of all men of good will.” It is a
true document of the people.

ney