"Cominform Tool?"

In passing, Mr. O'Brien makes reference to "North Korean aggression," Ignoring the fact that who aggressed against whom has never been investigated. Foreign Office Far Eastern expert Sir John Pratt has assured the reading world that the aggression was Syngman Knee's, and certainly that gentleman's subsequent utterances and activities make that seem very likely. The only hand IUS ever took in the Korean holocaust was to give help to the students whose country was being torn up by foreign armies.

This passes for Mr. O'Brien as proof that IUS is a "Cominform tool." He adds to it the fact that IUS expelled the Yugoslav student union. This was certainly a hasty action, but I never heard that nubsequent Co-Sec supporters established a reasonable case against it. As for the incidents in Prague in 1948, when right-wing manoeuvring led to the replacement of one left-wing majority Government by another, what little violence there was came from the right, not the left. Some of it may have been from students: occasionally that phenomenon, the rightwing student, to make an appearance. Certain it is that there is greater equality of educational opportunity in Czechoslovakia than there used to be.

Mr. O'Brien seems to have a private theory about what constitutes a national student union, quite different from the one he enunciates at the beginning of his article. He appears to include pet organisations of corrupt despotisms in Latin America and South Asia. Certainly IUS's Indian affillate, the All-India Student Federation, has a history of activity for student needs far back into the 30's, whereas the officially sponsored body attached to Co-Sec is quite a new arrival. Just how representative the Co-Sec affiliates from Slam, Pakistan, and the Philippines are, I defy Mr. O'Brien to describe.