Where the News Ends
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
WHERE the NEWS ENDS By William Henry Chamberlin A Brilliant Satire From Britain It is very seldom that I turn over this space in The New Leader to a guest contributor. Recently, however, I found...
...For example, the public hanging of Herr Ulbricht from the top of the Brandenburger Tor cannot be lightly dismissed as a piece of senseless and irresponsible hooliganism...
...The slaughter goes on, and it must be clear to any realist that conditions all over Eastern Europe are not far short of civil disorder...
...Malenkov is indeed dead, there must be somebody else in Russia who is still alive...
...Justice and expediency alike demand it...
...But, while we feel it our duty to expose the wishful thinking and the sadistic screaming of the Fleet Street Blimps, we have no wish to conceal our opinion that the situation is grave...
...It is now absolutely essential for the very survival of the human race that there should be four-power talks on the highest level at once...
...The recent restiveness in Eastern Europe and perhaps in Russia itself makes it necessary to offer much more...
...The author is concealed behind the pseudonym, "Roderick Random," but I have a suspicion as to his identity...
...There is a total general strike from the Baltic to Ruthenia...
...It must be stopped...
...When all malicious canards have been discounted, there remains a substratum of disquieting truth...
...The screaming headlines and hysterical war whoops which have disfigured the capitalist press in the last week are much more than an insult to human intelligence and dignity...
...Only when that is done can we reasonably ask Russia to consent to our disarmament...
...And, if Mr...
...Until this week, we have always insisted that it would be idle for the Prime Minister to talk with the Kremlin unless he came armed with the offer of immediate and unconditional disarmament...
...In every town, public buildings are on fire and thousands of Communist officials have been liquidated...
...They are no less than a direct provocation to a Third World War...
...Even if Mr...
...Nothing whatever was gained when Warsaw Radio tried to broadcast a lengthy statement claiming that all was quiet within the city when the noise of rifle shots and exploding hand-grenades could be heard by all listening and, indeed, the announcer appears to have been shot dead in the middle of paragraph two...
...There is more to it than that, and the Daily Worker does the progressive cause no good by pretending that Herr Ulbricht accidentally hanged himself while doing gymnastic exercises on the top of the Tor...
...But, if we stand back and do nothing, Blimpish reaction may well triumph over the progressive forces and extinguish the last and best hope of all mankind...
...Recently, however, I found in the British weekly Time and Tide of February 27 one of the finest pieces of political and journalistic satire I have read in several years...
...Malenkov is not dead, then let the Prime Minister seek him out by all means, advertising in the newspapers if necessary...
...This is McCarthyism run amok...
...However, such faults as these are at least faults on the right side, but what can be said of the insane provocations of the American-sponsored radio in West Berlin...
...Now let "Roderick Random," whoever he may be, speak for himself, in a version necessarily abridged to fit this space: FACING AN AWFUL LOT OF FACTS A Progressive Leading Article of the Year 1960 It is the firm conviction of the New Politician and Anti-Nation [there is a British anti-anti-Communist weekly called the New Statesman and Nation --W.H.C.] that the disquieting news that has recently come from Eastern Europe imposes upon the entire press a responsibility for sober comment and cautious reporting such as has never been known before in the whole of human history...
...Never had the Press Council more urgent business than this...
...That radio broadcast the news of Herr Ulbricht's death six times in one day without a single word of regret...
...But, once again, the ideal solution, delayed too long, has been rendered obsolete by events...
...He is also one of the all too few principled British anti-Communists--because he has never forgotten the cruelty, hypocrisy, human suffering and degradation that he saw in the Soviet Union during the bleak and terrible famine in the winter and spring of 1932-33...
...If my guess is correct, he is a brilliant journalist and one of the genuine masters of irony and ridicule in modern English prose...
...The Prime Minister must offer to send reliable British troops to maintain order and restore confidence in the people's regimes...
...The peace of the world may yet be saved by one bold stroke...
...This proposal may well prove unpopular, but we are convinced that nothing less imaginative will meet the present emergency...
Vol. 37 • April 1954 • No. 14
