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m S ASSOCIATION OF"GEORGIA DECEMBER 'll, 1954. ©V bulletin The Official Organ of the Catholic Laymen’s Association of Georgia, Incorporated JOHN MARKWALTER, Editor 416 Eighth Street, Augusta, Ga. Further Remarks On Yugoslavia THIS WORLD OF OURS ASSOCIATION OFFICERS FOR 1953-1954 J p - MEYER, Columbus President MARTIN J. CALLAGHAN, K. S, G„ Mac-on -E- M. HEAGARTY, Waycross Honora MRS. L. E. MOCK, Albany DAMON J. SWANN, Atlanta GEORGE GINGELL, Columbus RAWSON HAVERTY. Atlanta JOHN M. BRENNAN. Savannah _ JOHN T. BUCKLEY, Augusta JOHN MARKWALTER, Augusta MISS CECILE FERRY. Augusta ALVIN M. McAULIFFE, Augusta ry Vice-Presidents Vice-President V. P„ Publicity - V. P., Activities - V. P., Membership Secretary - — — Treasurer Executive Secretary Financial Secretary ._J._ Auditor Vol. XXXV DECEMBER 11, 1954 No. 15 Entered as second class matter at the Post Office, Monroe, Georgia, and accepted for mailing at special rate of postage provided by para- ^ section 34.40, Postal Laws and Regulations. Member of N. C. W. C. News Service, Religious News Service, the ■Catholic Press Association of the United States, the Georgia Press Association, and the National Editorial Association. Published fortnightly by the Catholic Laymen’s Association of Geor gia Inc. with the Approbation of the Most Reverend Archbishop- Bishop of Savannah-Atlanta and of the Right Reverend Abbot Ordinary of Belmont. Wnina and Communism Some p e °p le have just found out that a Red is a Red lf y ell ow. There has been some grumbling in the United .•?oates about our refusal to recognize Communist China and give her a seat in the United Nations. The fact of a defacto government, even if Communistic, was a cogent argument. And not even the greatest optimist believes that Chiang-Kai- : nek will return to the mainland victorious and restored to Power with the acclaim of the Chinese. . Bu M h , ls diplomatic sterness of our government was /,wen additional strength last week in the latest of many provocations on,the part of the Chinese Communists. This was their imprisonment of eleven Americans and their charge f ^P 10na ge against them. The ruthlessness and the tyranny 01 Communism was demonstrated unerringly by this new puppet of the Soviets. gy y s new This adds another item to the long list of reasons why oar government should not recognize Red China These reasons were recited impressively by Henry Cabot Lodge, ifL fn a m a 1° r t0 the United Nations ’ in a recent address doie a Catholic convention. And chief among them is the a ct that it has been proved conclusively that Red China was - ‘ aggressor in the Korean war. The missionaries returning from China—those who were ; '' lUna te enough to escape—wall add another paragraph to P rotest against a ruthless and ungodly regime. Formerly j '. mg m a land where the rate of conversion to Christianity was extremely high, welcomed by the peace-loving people of ' loosely organized nation, bringing with them medical skills md great material assistance, these mission workers now nave been the victims of oppression, torture, and expulsion. Let the Red Chinese government be recognized, not as a egitimate government, but only for what she is, a ruthless mneistie force bent on destroying the freedom and dignity ot man. J (By Richard Pattee) Some weeks ago I wrote a piece concerning the increasing cordi ality of the relations between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, and the signs that seemed to point to a rapproche ment between the two com munist states. The secular press has con firmed this im pression in nu merous dis patches regard ing the normali zation of diplomatic and com mercial ties between the USSR and Tito’s Yugoslavia. In view of the recent visit of Mr. Harold Stassen to Belgrade and that of a leading Yugoslav communist, Svetozar Vukmano- vic, to Washington to discuss fur ther aid and assistance by the United States, it may not be en tirely inopportune to refhr once more to the problem. For this is, fundamentally, one of the great contradictions of American for eign policy. It is also a source of perplexity to those who are con cerned about the prodigality with which US aid is dispensed even to those who are, at best, an ex tremely fragile reed on which to depend. Closer Than Ever Since last writing on this sub ject, the indications are clear for those who .read. Soviet-Yugoslav relations are improving so rapidly that there would appear to be but one logical step remaining: the re establishment of Yugoslavia as a cooperating member of the Soviet bloc. Tito has praised as a “positive step” the so-called “new Soviet policy” under Malenkov. Comin- form propaganda against Yugo slav has virtually ceased, and there can be no doubt that a good deal of the heat has been taken off the Belgrade government. Ev en more important is the degree of resumption of trade between Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and the satellite states. Today, as the Croatia Press—published in the United States—tells us, “Belgrade and Moscow are ideologically closer than ever before.” Anii-Slalin Only? Undoubtedly the death of Stalin has changed the situation percept ibly. It is no longer possible to accuse Yugoslavia of anti-Stalin ism” when Malenkov himself is unquestionably “anti-Stalinist” in a certain sense of the word. The important thing now is to deter mine with precision just how “anti-Soviet” Tito is. It would be sheer folly to continue talk of unlimited economic and military aid, when everything points to a very probable reintegration of Yugoslavia within the Soviet scheme of things. If the United States has lost in estimable quantities of arms and materials of war in the Viet Nam debacle, the prospect of rearming a strong Yugoslav force and un derwriting the economy of the country on the eve of its readmis sion to the Soviet family of na tions is not. to say the least, an inviting prospect. Dollars Don't Help The People The curious thing is that there seems to be no decrease of the intention of aiding Yugoslavia by every means possible. Secretary Dulles, following the announce ment of the settlement of the Trieste dispute, stated that “it opens the way to concrete and forward-looking steps in the solu tion of economic and military problems in which your country and mine have a common con cern.” The tragedy is that there is no indication that the economic aid granted to date has either retard ed the communization of the country or even bettered the eco nomic outlook for the mass of the Yugoslav people. The program of forced collective farms has been resumed according to reports out of Yugoslavia. State confiscation of rural properties has led to a diminution in farm production, with the resultant famine condi tion in many parts of the nation. Although information is often meager, it is equally clear that in housing, transportation and gen eral living conditions there is precious little indication that American dollar’s have contribut ed anything to the only ones who really count—the people of Yugo slavia, not their illegitimate and usurpatory government. Time For Distinction The liberal element in the Un ited States is always critical of aid to any country under dictator ship—that is, under what is con sidered a right-wing dictatorship —lest such aid be used to main tain said dictatorship in power. It would seem to be high time to make the distinction clear be tween Tito and his people. A few years more of this sort of thing and we shall probably find that Tito has returned to the orthodox communist fold of sub servience to Moscow, and that the Yugoslav people, disillusioned and frustrated, have become convinc ed that it was the USA that fin anced and condoned the commun ist experiment during the period from 1948 on. It will be inordi nately difficult to persuade them that we are interested in their ultimate liberation. SurAum Chorda. WHAT'S RIGHT WITH THE WORLD? By REV. JAMES M. GILLIS, C. S. P. (Contributing Editor, The Catholic World) APROPOS OF ANDREI Y. VISHINSKY .....L&apJ' JtgsA Christmas Shopping There really isn’t any getting away from it; the grand L-sh is on. And from now until Dec. 24, all signs point to the nearest store with Christmas gifts for sale. For some reason, we wish that it wasn’t quite that way. A t that we deplore the giving of gifts to loved ones in n Ration of the Magi who brought gifts to the newborn .rang We believe m Christmas and the spirit of generosity and love that pervades the Feast. But somehow, we feel that the'whole thing has been pushed around too much and that many people are going overboard without even seeing the real thing. The hurry and contusion of it even destroys the realism of the Church’s V® 1 ?* ht “ r gy and the cr y of John the Baptist for penance. We d like to see John the Baptist standing on a street corner GO- lay instead of one of the bell-ringing Santas. What a mes- ,e he would have for us who think of Christmas only as a pit-buying ordeal! He would probably tell us all to cut out most of this foolishness and start preparing for' the One w r ose birthday alone makes this feast possible. Be that as it may, we believe that the expression of the uLe spirit of Christmas should be continued, but always proper bounds. For instance, a man should provide pits tor his family, but he should certainly not go so heavily re. debt doing so that this debt will be a burden on family nances for another year. We believe that friends have every right to exchange gifts, but we believe also that no gift should ever be given out of a false human respect Let us give out of love and charity, or not at all. Finally, we believe coat Gods poor should be recipients of Christmas charity, lie who forgets the poor and the orphans has likelv forgotten also Him who had no place to lav His head. On the day after Andrei Vishin- sky dropped dead, I was speaking to a member of the U. N., a de vout Catholic, indeed a daily com municant. He seemed to feel sad that the head of the Russian dele gation had passed on. “I saw him so often,” he said, “and spoke with him so frequently, that I feel strange about his being here no more. I prayed for him at. Mass this morning.” I was on the point of asking my U. N. friend a few questions, but I refrained. It is bad manners to embarrass a man when he is in grief. But I should like to put some of those questions here by way of pointing up the anomaly and what seems to me the absurd ity—I might almost say the crimi nal absurdity—of good men’s hob nobbing with the wicked in the interests of the political and moral betterment of the world. ■> But first let us recall the fact that Vishinsky was guiltv of more murders than Genghis Khan, his Mongolian forebear. That media eval Oriental savage make King Herod and the Roman Emperors from Nero to Diocletain seem like amateurs at blood-spilling. But the modern Russians have in turn surpassed the ancients and the mediaevals. The devil’s trinity—Stalin, Vi- shinksky, Molotov—in the earlv 1930’s deliberately starved to death between six million and ten million people in the Ukraine. Add to that number the 10,000 Polish officers shot to death in cold blood in the Katyn forest; add the additional thousands of innocents who were starved, shot, stabbed, hanged, poisoned, assas sinated by ones and twos or doz ens, or slaughtered by hundreds in all the iron curtain countries, and you have such a stupendous mass of crime as never occurred elsewhere in any comparable number of years in the history of the human race. Now, in accord ance with a principle of Christian ethics, the men who planned, or dered, supervised those millions of murders are as guilty as the men who actually performed the executions. Indeed more guilty. So when the good pious daily communicant spoke of meeting and talking with Vishinsky, I felt like asking: “Did you shake hands with him? How does it feel to press the hand of a master mur derer? Did you also eat and drink with him? Did you touch glasses with him and toast the other head criminals in Moscow? In the pa pers Vishinsky was often pictured as laughing. What was he laugh ing at? Did you laugh with him? If you were to meet the devil and he was laughing, would you laugh with him? And what would the devil be laughing about? “When you met Vishinsky, what form of greeting did you use? When you left him did you by chance make a % slip of the tongue I and say ‘Good-bye,’ that is ‘God be with you’? What do you think of St. John’s warning in the Sa cred Scripture, 'If any man come to you and bring not this doc-, trine’ (he had in mind the doc trine that Christ is God, but let us say the doctrine that there is a God) ‘receive him not into the house, nor say to him God speed you, for he that sayeth God speed you communicates with his wick ed works.’ Didn’t you feel that by shaking hands with a murder er, a multiple murderer, laughing and joking with him, eating and drinking with him, you made yourself partaker of his wicked works? “Now that Alger Hiss is out of jail will you invite him to dinner in your own home? Introduce him to your wife and children? Will you sign a petition to have his citizenship restored and urge him- to run for Congress or the Sen ate? If you couldn’t bear to sit in either chamber of Congress with Hiss, how could you sit not only with but under Vishinsky when he was president of the As sembly of the U. N.? Do you feel that George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson should have invited Benedict Arnold to come back from his exile in Eng land and sit in the First Federal Congress? Who do you think did more harm to the civilized world, (Continued on Page Five)