Not quite a year ago the second most important man in the Moscow government, the wily Athanase Mikoyan, was received in the United States with much bowing and scraping on the part of American bankers and business men to whom trade and dollars are far more important than morality or even plain simple decency. Mikoyan, whose hands were encrusted with the blood from the massacres in the Ukraine, Armenia and elsewhere, and dripping with the blood of slaughtered Budapest, was welcomed with open arms, feted and generally treated as the noblest and most honorable of guests, not only by financial circles but also by the highest representatives of the American people.
But come September, the so-called guardians of the free world will sink even lower. They will roll out the red carpet and prepare all honors for the arrival of the supreme master of the most diabolical organization ever known, Khrushchev himself, the chief of the assassins of Hungary, Poland and East Germany, the dictator who has trampled under foot the liberty and the faith of millions of Christians living in central Europe. The American authorities are asking the American people to receive "with courtesy" - this man who is responsible for the crushing of Hungarian patriots under the tanks of the Red army; this man who ordered the murders of the Hungarian chieftans, Nagy and Maleter, after having tricked them into surrendering; this man who has been one of the principal factors in a regime which for more than 42 years has perpetrated some of the most hideous crimes, which smashed without mercy and sent to death or to the certain death of concentration camps all those who have dared support the liberty of the individual and have demanded that the individual's fundamental rights be respected.
Our own Canadian government has even admitted studying the possibility of inviting this blood-stained man to drop off in Ottawa for a visit on his way back to Moscow where he will continue to mock the western countries and laugh at their culture, their beliefs and the remains of respect they may have for the sanctity of the individual.
It is with good reason that Cardinal Cushing of Boston, on hearing the news of the invitation to Khrushchev, cried; "It is as if we opened our frontiers to the enemy in time of war!".
The Cardinal was not speaking of an armed invasion but he explains why he considers Khrushchev such a dangerous man, "a man dedicated to a philosophy which leads to slavery... Anyone who thinks that we can influence Khrushchev simply by showing to him our democracy at work and demonstrating to him our great wealth, has no idea of the deep contempt, imbued with hatred, which Khrushchev and his colleagues profess for our way of life. We cannot change him."
Now, it often happens that our own people return from a visit to the U.S.S.R., full of praise for the accomplishments of the Soviets and considerably softened in their anti-Communism - and anxious to tell their fellow-citizens how they feel. But who ever heard of a Mikoyan or a Koslov returning to Russia from a visit to the U. S. A. lauding our way of life and our accomplishments. And we can hardly imagine Khrushchev going home and praising the Western way of life...
But even considered in the light of a possible conflict between the two blocs, who is really going to benefit from this invitation to the Russian dictator?
It is generally conceded that the two camps are about equal in armed strength -- one capable of wreaking as much destruction as the other.
The West has a trump card on the other side of the Iron Curtain; just as Russia holds a trump card on this side of the Iron Curtain. The card of the Western powers is the discontentment and the thirst for liberty of the people who live in Hungary, Poland, Rumania, Germany and the other lands which are satellites of Moscow. The Russian card is the millions of members of the Communist party in all the lands of the West as well as the inummerable fellow-travellers, parlour-pinks and all the breed who do not come out and declare themselves Communists but who actively support the principles of this creed...
Now the invitation to the reception of honor extended to Khrushchev is a slap in the face to all the peoples who are groaning under the iron heel of Moscow and who live only by the hope that the free countries are interested in their plight. They know full well that when these barbarians are received "with courtesy", such a reception is not for the purpose of reproaching these assassins with their crimes or pleading for justice for their victims. The despair, deception and bitterness which is bound to seize the hearts and minds of these suffering peoples are a victory for Moscow and a defeat for the free world...
Again, the visit of Khrushchev to the United-States and the courteous welcome given him there can only stimulate the zeal of the fifth columnists there who are working to sap the vitality of the spirit of Christianity and patriotism which exists there. To fortify the enemy within our walls and alienate our friends without is a strange way to go about strengthening our position.
As it is, the free nations are having enough difficulty agreeing on what attitude they should a adopt with regard to the threats being made by Moscow and by. Khrushchev personnally. Certainly the decision of Washington to invite Khrushchev to the United Stated isn't going to help to bring about a union of views. A former premier of France, who was also his country's minister of Foreign Affairs, wrote in the weekly magazine "Carrefour"...!
"We are now going merrily along the road which leads to the disintegration of the Atlantic Pact and towards a new relaxation of purpose, more dangerous than any previous. I am sorry to have to disillusion those who are simple of heart and pure and candid of soul. The curious alliances which have sprung up during the course of Mr. Nixon's trip, alliances which have not eliminated by any means the campaigns of slander and insult, have every chance of marking, in the very near future, the begining of the surrender of the free world."...
Mr. Bidault, attributes, in part at least, this weakening of the attitude of Washington, to the approaching elections in the United States: "They know well in Russia how to deal with American statesment on the eve of American elections.".
We believe, however, that the cause of this weakening goes much deeper. We believe that it springs primarily from a weakening, an abandoning of spiritual values. This is exactly what His Excellency, the Bishop in exile of Yuan Lin (China), Bishop O'Gara, stressed last winter while addressing the St. Paul Guild in Manhattan, New York:
"Communism and secularism are philosophical bedfellows. The unholy bond between them is strengthened by their mutual and fierce antagonism to religion. Herein lies the reason why, as a nation, the United States is so soft on Communism.
"Politically we are a member-nation of the so-called Free World (Christian World!!!) as opposed to the Communist bloc. Ideologically speaking, an impassable gulf lies between these two worlds. One might reasonably expect to find a stalemate existing between these two irreconcilable camps. But such is not the case.
"Communism advances while the free world gives ground. Why this humiliating fact! It must be repeated over and over - Communists are unrelenting and unrelaxed in their militant materialism, always and everywhere they openly profess and consistently practice their dialectic-materialism: they are resolute in their policy of expansion whether by intrigue or force, dogged in their determination to conquer the world, including the United States.
"On the other hand, the supposedly Christian West, because of the pervading and corroding secularist atmosphere, compromises on its basic political and religious principles and makes appeasement a national policy. Obsession with secularism vitiates hallowed traditions and undermines wholesome patriotism...
"Despite the brutal, murderous and perfidious history of the Soviets and Red China, we persist in doing business with them and drink to their good health; when their high officials with crime soiled records are pleased to visit our shores, we spread out the plush carpet for them...
"Not withstanding the fact that of the 52 agreements made during recent years between the USSR and the U.S.A., 50 have already been broken, we still persist in making new agreements with Moscow. When the Catholic country of Hungary rose to a man to throw off the Communist yoke, we stood silently by whilst every spiritual value our forefathers fought for, and built our nation on, was mocked and trampled in the dirt..
"Why this exasperating, shamefull. inconsistency? To me, the answer is very plain. In a Communist jail the brutal principles of dialectic-materialism were monotonously drilled into my ears, viz: That there is no God, no soul no after-life, no virtue that there is but one commendable attitude of mind, abject submission to the People's Government.
"Within the sacred confines of these United States, in classrooms and on platforms, the same perfidious principals are being continously expounded before our American youth — that there is no God, no soul, no after-life, no virtue, no absolute, no stable morality; that what the majority decrees and does, howsoever outrageous to Christian morality or contradictory to the teachings of Christ, is the accepted mode of the times and the norm of good manners...".
This quotation, originally appearing in the Brooklyn Tablet of February 7, 1959., was also reproduced in edition 7 of "Fiat" a Catholic publication of Dublin, Ireland. It was no doubt the occasion of Mikoyan's visit to the United States that prompted this Bishop, expelled from China by the Chinese Reds, to express himself. His thoughts and sentiments can only be strengthened by the approaching visit of Khrushchev...
When Mikoyan invited himself to America, he. expressed his intention to visit Florida (an intention which he subsequently renounced). The Archbishop of St. Augustin, Bishop Hurley, announced that he would declare the period of this assassin's visit a period of mourning and he invited the faithful to attend a special daily Mass; during the visit he also would have the bells of all the Churches in his diocese tolled daily.
Since it is Khrushchev himself who has been officialy invited by the American governement, the entire nation should proclaim a period of mourning, and the church bells, throught the nation should ring the knell. But, alas... so completely have we lost our sense of Christian values that if the Anti-Christ himself were to announce his intention to visit our shores, he would receive numberless invitation to banquets and civic receptions, and an army of journalists would dispute the honor of asking his impressions and publishing his utterances and he would be given ample space and time in the press and on the radio and television. Our own CBC you may guess would hasten to present him to its listening and viewing audience.
Subscribe