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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 10, No. 1. February 28, 1947

A Lesson from Hitler

A Lesson from Hitler

The Hitlerian lesson, "the bigger the lie the more likely people are to believe it," is being employed by some of the American press today, and big lies are being repeated again and again, she said.

"Russia is a geographical entity, a form of society in which 200,000,000 people get up in the morning, eat three meals (if they are lucky), and fall in love and go to college, and like theatres and dancing and are human beings, just as you and I.

"We in this country, have to remind ourselves of this because of the barrage of attacks using words of high emotional content," she said.

She described "the policy abroad to confound us with confusion."

Commenting on Admiral William H. Standley's recent statement that the Russian people did not know of the extent of American help during the war Miss Winter said, "I don't know why some American officials say what some American officials say.

"Everyone I met in Russia expressed much love and appreciation to America for the aid they received. Where-ever I went, people asked me to please tell Americans how they valued the assistance of America and that they hoped we could be allies in peace as well as in war," she added.

The Russian War Relief Association was called the American Aid Society in Russia, so that the people would know America was sending help, she said.

The Russians are very aware that they helped to preserve the freedom of the world, said Miss Winter, who noted that nearly 25,000,000 Russians were slain by the Nazis.

"The first thing the Nazis did in most of the Russian towns they captured was to kill the librarians and school teachers because they were carriers of culture," she added.

Russia's main weapon in the war was secrecy; therefore correspondents were not allowed to visit the front. But, as a parallel to Russian secrecy, she pointed out that shortly before her trip to Russia, she tried to visit the Ford plant in Detroit so that she could Gave a basis for comparing Russian and American factories. Officials in the Ford plant told her it would be "completely impossible."

Medical treatment in Russia is free to everyone, according to Miss Winter. Mothers are required to attend clinica regularly for nine months before until four years after their children are born, and they are provided with layettes free of charge.

One of Miss Winter's friends, hearing of this, said it was too much regimentation and asked if she didn't like adventure.

"I told him I liked adventure, but when I was having a baby, I also liked having a doctor around," she said.

The ideal of the Soviet Union is to be able to provide every person with an opportunity to be examined by a doctor twice yearly, but the war toli of doctors has retarded this.

Every store in the Soviet Union has a complaint book in which customers who have had bad service or to whom salespeople have been discourteous may enter grievances, Miss Winter said.

"It is the job of everyone in the Soviet Union to help everyone else if he can," she pointed out, "and you have a sense of the community working together for the common good."