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Copyright © 1957 Lithuanian Students Association, Inc.   December, 1957  No.4(13)  Managing Editor P. V. Vygantas

Editorial

TYRANNY'S  FORTIETH  BIRTHDAY

F^ORTY years ago a small group of conspirators seized power in Russia thereby extinguishing its young democracy. They promised land to the peasants, factories to the workers, conditions of genuine creativity to the intellectuals.

Today, a cluster of dictators is boisterously celebrating this event which brought them might and wealth. The peasants are languishing as landless serfs, the workers are rightless laborers, the intellectuals grind out stale slogans under police surveillance.

While during these forty years, observation of basic human rights has made great forward strides all over the globe, the map of the Soviet Union remains blotted with labor camps and injustice is the very fabric of its society. While popular control over governments is increasing everywhere, the Soviet leaders practice the jungle law of purges and counter-purges within their narrow circle, in disregard and contempt cf their own people.

The dictators on the podium in Red Square know in their hearts that communism as an ideology lies in shambles. The roll call of famous names who continue abandoning communism in disillusioncment and disgust never leaves their ears. The tyrants who portend to celebrate a revolution are haunted by the names of Poznan and Budapest. Yet to-day they abound in bluster, belligerence and confidence. They brandish missiles and display earth-circling satellites — as if this would change even an iota in their infamous record of the last forty years; as if scientific achievements at the expense of human lives and misery could ever justify tyranny.

Weapons of mass destruction in the hands of these new tyrants now threaten the peace and the very existence of the free world. And in the face of this danger the fate of Lithuania and other captive European nations is a living testimonial to the real meaning of November 7, 1917. They were robbed of their freedom and independence by Soviet imperialism in its drive toward world conquest. By their unceasing resistance, however ,the captive people — the staunchest allies of the free world — are thwarting the Soviet design. By their unfailing allegiance to Europe and democracy they constitute a living shield of the Western civilization.

The free world owes it to them and to its own survival that every peaceful means be put into action for their liberation. Instead of playing into Soviet hands with the ideas of graduallism, titoism or appeasement it should ally itself with the vanguard of the genuine revolution — the unceasing revolution for freedom and self-determination in the Soviet-subjugated countries. .Only by answering the dynamism of tyranny with the dynamism of democracy can the West be victorious. Only by drawing all the consequence from the stark fact that in this age of almost limitless means of destruction the key to peace and security lies in the advancement of the boundaries of freedom, will the West spare mankind the spectre of war or surrender into slavery.

It is important that we remember that communism and nazism are evil things in themselves. They are not merely wrong because they have threatened American security and the freedom of other nations. Not even if these threats had disappeared, they •^sould still be wrong, because they denied human freedom and raised their blasphemous hands against the Creator.