Pacifist Raids

It was 6 p.m., and Moscow's Pushkin Square was thronged with workers heading homeward for their evening borsch. Suddenly two pacifists, an American girl and an Englishman, appeared and began handing out leaflets in Russian urging the startled recipients to take "any peaceful action in your power" to bring about the withdrawal of Soviet and other Warsaw Pact troops from Czechoslovakia.

"Why are you doing this?" asked a woman in the fast-swelling crowd. Speaking in hesitant Russian, 24-year-old New Yorker Vicky Rovere answered: "Because of my conscience." It was not a satisfactory answer. Another woman shouted "Provocateur!" and a third tried to lead Vicky away. Most of the leaflets were torn up. Within five minutes the police arrived, and Vicky tossed her remaining leaflets high in the air. Immediately, she was punched hard in the stomach by an elderly man. "That," she said, "was not very nice of you." Across the square, Andrew Papworth, also 24, and sporting a T shirt proclaiming END NATO, END THE U.S.

WAR IN VIETNAM AND END THE OCCUPATION OF CZECHOSLOVAKIA, Was passing out handbills. He, too, was collared by police and the two protesters were taken off for interrogation.

That was the end of the first Mos cow demonstration by a small organization called War Resisters' International, founded in The Netherlands after World War I and now headquartered in London. W.R.I., which claims branches in 40 nations, supports nonviolence and works closely with the Quakers. A major point in its program is "to seek and maintain contact with war resisters in countries where it is dangerous to oppose government policy."

At the same time as the Moscow demonstration was going on, W.R.I, teams in Warsaw, Sofia and Budapest went into action. All the protesters were arrested as they handed out their leaflets. In Moscow, Miss Rovere and Papworth were questioned for more than five hours, then deported unceremoniously to London next morning. Poland expelled its five Danes almost as quickly. But Hungary and Bulgaria were not so hasty. At week's end, however, the Bulgarian government released the four Italian youths who had demonstrated in Sofia, and Hungary freed its five protesters, including Robert Eaton, 24, of Philadelphia. Were the demonstrations useful? Miss Rovere, safely back in London, summed it up this way: "I wish that I had had a real chance to talk to people, but I think we accomplished something worthwhile."

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