The Soviet delegation now touring Canada (Sept. 6) is composed of individuals who are not "Russian farmers" but "jailors and slave masters over the farmers in whose name they pretend to speak", — declared the American Friends of Russian Freedom, an organization dedicated to helping the people of Russia in their struggle against Soviet dictatorship.
These Soviet delegates, we are warned, are merely government officials of high rank, traveling under the vigilant control of the Soviet secret police agents within the delegation, and do not represent the Soviet peasants. They are officials of a regime deeply hated by about all Russian peasants and of a collectivized agricultural system which the Russian peasants have fought with "heroic desperation".
A Washington report (Human Events) said:
"In Washington, some who specialize in agriculture say that the words and actions of the visiting Soviet officials on the tour reveal that they regard the whole business not as a study of American methods of agronomy, but as a propaganda show to delude Americans and to discourage Russian peasants in their resistance to collectivization."
The Canadian Intelligence Service observes:
"Consider Canadians who came to this country from Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, the Ukraine, and other lands now under Red tyranny. These people had their property confiscated and loved ones butchered by the Red masters of Moscow. Now, as Canadians, they have to pay taxes to junket these butchers about their adopted homeland of Canada!"
This same publication sums this question up editorially, in these words:
"Today we are witnessing an unprecedented courtship and love-feast between Western and Red officials, Diplomats, politicians, and 'farm' delegations are junketing back and forth, through and around the Iron Curtain.
"We are a tolerant people, disposed to trust and honour the spokesmen of other people. And in rolling out the carpet for the Reds, we perhaps feel that we are building up good-will between our people and those people behind the Curtain. But what we are missing are these points:
"(1) Only trusted representatives OF COMMUNISM are allowed to travel from behind the Curtain, and they DO NO REPRESENT the will and spirit of the captive peoples over whom they rule. They are the hated murderers and of pressors of captive peoples — not their true spokesmen.
"(2). If the underworld seized control of city and began murdering and robbing the inhabitants, could we reasonably expect to bolster the victims' moral and win their confidence and friendship by collaborating with the gangsters enslaving them?
"Every time we shake hands with, 'recog nize', or otherwise honour a communist, spokesman, far from building good-will and understanding between peoples, we actually insult, discourage, and promote misunderstanding between our own people and our real friends behind the Curtain.
"This point can be missed or disregarded only with disastrous consequences."