The young Soviet poet
Yevgeni Yevtushenko spent
some time in Britain in
1962. On New Year’s Eve,

he sent the following mes-

sage to the British Daiiy
Worker and the people of
Britain.

@
“™yuHE Moscow air today is
i crisp and fresh, the city
prickles like a giant New
Year tree. The snow-cover-
ed roads are strewn with
green pine needles.

YEVGENI YEVTUSHENKO

Trees ride down the street
on the backs of cars. Trees
jog along the pavements on
the shoulders of pedestrians.
If you could lift off the house
roofs all together, you would
see a forest of firs in every
Part of Moscow.

Every New Year’s Eve
people sift the bad and the
good in the year’s events
and guess what the future
Should bring. We do this
here in Moscow and you,
too, in London.

Over my vodka (not lemon-
ade as in phoney novels) I

remember today all my
British friends, beginning
with the youngest.

* * *

I begin, for instance, with
the youngest man I met in
your country, Henry Moore,
this Beethoven of sculpture,
with two patches of blue Eng-
lish sky under his grey
brows; and the youngest
Married couple I met in your
country, Sir Charles and
Lady Snow, fashioned by

_ Annual Slav concert

‘| clink glasses
with_ you...’

Nature herself of goodness,
smiles and freshness.

I wonder about the secret
of youth and realize noth-
ing makes us young so much
as love for people!

I realize that nothing ages
a man more than malice!

I think of what still hin-
ders relations between the
Russian and British peoples,
between all peoples.

With hate I think of a
loathsome, slippery Cus-
tomer, creeping in every-
where, with the face of
Uriah Heep. His name is
Distrust.

I think of the internation-
al whore who wriggles her
hips. Her name is Lies.

Both- have long been join-
ed in a happy marriage, like
a profitable business deal.

The pair of them do a
lot to prevent people living
happily in this world.

* * *

Let us not admit them to-
day into a single home! Let
no room be made for them
round any New Year tree,
round any table!

May they starve and freeze
in the streets and snow-
storms while you and I
drink vodka or whisky, go
waltzing, do Russian dances,
the Twist or Madison and
laugh at them in Moscow,
London, or wherever we are.

Today when the pure scent
of New Year trees is in the
air, it is more than ever a
sin to distrust and to lie.

Let us be each other’s
Santa Claus, and not only on
New Year’s Eve, but every
other

day. Then all our
wishes will come true!
co * *

I know this may sound
like the naive talk of a slight-
ly drunken poet.

But the slender girl Naiv-
ety will finally triumph
over the sly and crafty old
man with the broken nose,
whose name is Cynicism.

And with this toast I
raise my vodka over these
many miles to clink glasses
with you in England at, his
New Year hour!

slated for Jan. 20

he B.C. Slav Committee
has announced that this
year’s All-Slav Concert will
be held on Sunday, January
20, at 8 p.m. at the Queen

Elizabeth Theatre. ‘
€ concert promises to be

~~ WORTH.
_ READING.

China, by Felix Greene
(Paperback) Price 95c.
Greene spent five months
travelling over 10,000 miles
in China and has written a
full scale eyewitness report
of that large country.
He tells how he was im-
Pressed by the rapid techno-
logical advances the Chinese
People are making; of the en-
_ COuragement given to artists,
€ support of traditional
handicrafts, the new develop-

Ments in drama, dance and
Music, ,

all

‘able at the

a colorful affair, in the best
traditions of this annual
event. Participants will in-
clude the Assn. of United Uk-
rainian Canadians, Federa-
tion of Russian Canadians,
South Slav (Yugoslav) Organ-
ization, Polish Democratic
Ass’n. and others.

World-record high jump holder Valery Bru-
mel is not resting on his laurels.

He is con- ment.

tinuing working at the sport, in search of

an ever higher standard of athletic achieve-

—Tass Photo

‘Will you come for me daddy?’

The following was written
by Ralph J. Gleason, the very,
popular jazz critic and col-
umnist of the San Francisco
Chronicle.

e

be hen the bomb drops,

Daddy, will you come
for me or will you make me
stay at school?” Tears welled
up in Bridget’s green, 12-year-
old eyes and she tried so very
hard not to look afraid.

“But Daddy, tell me now.
I want to know. They read
us a bulletin in class and told
us what to do when the bomb
comes and. we’re at lunch or
in class. And I want to know
if you will come for me or
will you leave me in school.
I don’t want to stay in
school,” she added gravely.

a * *

As I looked at her I
thought, what have we done,
what have we done? To poi-
son the air and the sea and
the milk and the food is bad
enough, but. to poison the
minds of the children! Surely
this cannot be right.

“The only reason we can’t
go out and home on the other
signals,” Bridget said, “is be-
cause there wouldn’t be time.
Come for me, Daddy, if there

' is time. I’m sure they’d like
to get rid of all the kids if

they can. There’s so many.”

What can you say? What
can you tell them? Yes, baby,
T’ll come for you. Yes, I will.
If there’s time.

* * *

We bring them into this
world and they know nothing
of politics and war and can-
not dream of power plays and
nuclear fission. And we teach
them. We actually teach this

to them.

Invitations, for the nominal

‘price of $1.00, should be ob-

tained early and are avail-
People’s Co-op

Book Store, AUUC Hall, FRC
Hall, or from any member of
one of these progressive Sla-
vic organizations.

.

‘Daddy, will there be a
war? Will there?”

What can we be thinkin
of? What can have been in
our minds to push us so far
from reality that these ques-
tions can be asked at all.

And once asked, are not
only unanswerable but can-
not really be thought about.
Because to think about them
hard and seriously is to snap
completely.

‘Daddy, does. Khrushchev
want war?”

How can he, or anyone who
has ever looked into 12-year-
old eyes that questioned life

or death?
* * ®

De we, I wonder, know the
enormity of our crime? Do
the scientists and the politi-
cians and the statesmen and
the generals know what they
— and we who let them—
have done?

For when I sit there look-
ing into those green, 12-year-
old eyes trying so hard to be
brave and not to admit their
fear, when I look into those
eyes, I know what we have
all done.

And it is a greater crime
by far than making war or
threats or lusting after pro-
perty and land and power. ~

We have done an evil thing,
we adults, a thing so evil it is
almost beyond weighing.

We have taken from the
children their security, their
peace and their trust.

“Will you come for me or
will you make me stay at
school, Daddy, when the
bomb comes?”

We have made a world in
which this question can be
asked in solemn seriousness

by that most serious and sol-
emn human of them all — a
child.

& o s

We have done this and yet
we talk of politics and ideol-
ogy and demonstration, and
meetings and issue _ state-
ments. And make threats.

And in the classroom, the
children learn to hide be-
neath the desks from the un-
known terror and in their
minds the snake of fear
twists and wriggles and they
ask the questions we cannot
answer.

All we can say is, once
again we are here and we
are thankful for it. Let us
give thanks again. It has not
been a good year, but now
it’s a. good year when it is a
year we survive. Our stand-
ards have changed. We've
survived this one. May we

survive the rest and never,
never have to give the final
answers to the terrible ques-
tions in those bright green,
12-year-old eyes.

Choose Systems

Joe IvenS, Okanagan Mission,
writes: (to the Vancouver Sun,
which wasn’t published). The
weekly magazine of Nov. 17 sup-
plement ‘‘The Billionaires’’ to my
mind wasn’t illuminating but
rather nauseating. When I look
at Mr. Getty, pathetic to say
the least, the story behind these
men and their billions, plus the
tragedy, the poverty of their peo-
ple and all that goes with it
to pile up these ill-gotten gains.

And then I thought of Jack
Scott and his column of Sept.
28 ‘‘A New World for Maida’’ and
a great Christian country like the
United States of America, with
a millianaire president just itch-
ing to wipe Cuba off the map.
What for ? Just to keep these
billionaires from going broke, and
to keep little Maida poverty
stricken?

If I must choose between the
two systems or between the two
peoples, the Gettys or the Maidas,
I must stand foursquare with the
Maidas.

If you were out to make Com-

munists Mr. Editor with that

ty! DA

supplement, you couldn’t have
done a better job.

Good Neighbors

E. H. Tudor, Morningside, Alta.
writes: While we have been sur-
feited with Yuletide joys, “Happy
New Years’’ from press, radio,
TV and pulpit, with our Premier
adding his ‘‘Me too,”’ we took a
glance at the Free Press Week-
ly of Dec. 26. On the front page
in large type ‘‘200th ICBM ready”’
and the news that within two
years the U.S. will have in place
more than 1,000 nuclear-tipped
intercontinental missiles, capable
of striking a target more than
6,300-miles away, the warhead
packing an explosive equivalent
of two million tons of TNT. Each
missile is aimed at a target in
the Soviet Union.

Thus each Soviet citizen goes
to bed at night with the knowl-
edge that he or she may never
awake. The ‘good neighbor”
policy of Franklin D. Roosevelt,
turned into an age of terror for
the bulk ‘of our planet, earth.

PREBLIN E. P23 oF 6