Challenges Matthiessen

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

I was so annoyed at Professor Matthiessen's stand on Czechoslovakia that I feel it my duty to point out some facts to refute his distortions of the actual situation there.

First of all, the Communist-dominated government does not represent the will of the people. Klement Gottwald, the Premier, spent the war in Moscow while the Czech government in exile in London was valiantly resisting Nazi aggression. He was one of the original signers of the abolition of the Comintern in 1943. Some of the other signers were Togliatti, Dimintrov, Pauker, Tito, Thorez, and all other Communist puppet leaders today.

How does Professor Matthiessen reconcile the fact that Svaboda and Fierlinger, the so-called Socialists in this new government, also spent the war in Moscow? How does Professor Matthiessen reconcile the fact that today there is complete suppression of freedom of speech and the press in Czechoslavakia and an upheaval in the educational system to indoctrinate the people in Soviet dogma.

This movement by the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia is part of a concerted action by the Kremlin to dominate all the countries in Western Europe. Finland is next on the list, then possibly France and Italy. I thought we had learned the lesson at Munich. If we don't soon, it will be, once again, "too little and too late." Eric Sokolsky '48