Brutal Fact

The Czech jolt had jarred even Scandinavians out of dreams of neutrality. The next Communist campaign might be aimed at them.

Last week blunter talk about Communists came out of Scandinavia than any yet heard from a government next door to Russia. The talker was Norway's Einar Gerhardsen, long and lank like the King whose Prime Minister he is. Gerhardsen had left school at 16 to be a road mender. Then he became a trade union organizer. When the Germans landed in Norway and ousted him as mayor of Oslo, he went back to mending roads, clad in overalls. At night, after his road work, he organized the labor union section of the Norwegian underground. Later he spent several years in Nazi prisons.

Under his postwar Labor Party premiership, Norway has made Western Europe's greatest gains over prewar industrial production levels. But Road-Mender Gerhardsen saw some nasty obstacles in Norway's way to recovery. Moscow-led Communists, as well as patriots like himself, had worked up to postwar power through the resistance movement. Their influence was far greater than their eleven members in the 150-member Storting indicated.

Said Gerhardsen last week: "These events [in Czechoslovakia] have awakened gloom and apprehension among us. ... The threat to Norway and to the freedom and independence of the Norwegian people is the danger which the Communist Party represents at the present moment. The most vital task in the fight for independence, democracy and security under law in Norway is that of reducing the Communist Party and its influence. . . . We will try to convince those who joined them in good faith during the war, in the belief that the Communist Party was national and democratic.

"Today there is no longer anyone who has the right to nurture such a belief. Those who head the Communist Party in Norway today are Comintern Communists. Like their fellow workers in other lands, they are disciples of terror and dictatorship. No longer must well-worded declamations be allowed to prevent people from recognizing this brutal fact, even though for many it might constitute a sinister discovery."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.