!DOUGLAS HYDE'S COLUMN

!, Ten Years Ago • •
TT is just 10 years since the Com' munist putsch which made an end of democracy in Czechoslovakia and paved the way for the persecution of the Church.
Today, Czechoslovakia is just one of a number of Communist satellite states. Its name is charged with no more and no less meaning for most of us than the names of the other nations which have disappeared behind the Iron Curtain. Ten years ago it was a symbol. Its very name was dynamite.
The shock felt when Czechoslovak democracy was brutally crushed by armed Communist bands recedes more and more into the background.
From the end of World War II until February, 1948, Communists all over Europe talked and wrote of "Czechoslovakia's new way". Whole study courses were organised under this title. I tutored some of them myself.
The party leaders outside Russia believed that here was proof that in the new post-war world it was possible to evolve a new type of Communism which took account of the varying traditions of different nations
The Communist coup slammed the door on all that. Suddenly such talk became heresy. And from then on. the world knew — or should have known — that Communists have nothing but contempt for democracy. even when it serves their own purposes.
Kerala's Fight pROM Kerala, the Indian state,
where, in defiance of all the lessons of the past 10 years, a Communist government was elected last year. comes more news of Fr. Joseph Vadakkan's anti-Communist movement.
The election of the Communist government has given this highlyorganised and very active body an even bigger job to do than before.
" I am morally sure," Fr. Vadakkan writes. " that we will definitely defeat the Reds in the next election here if we are able to organise a well planned propaganda campaign, based upon our positive projects for social uplift of the working class."
The State Assembly has 127 members, of whom 65 are Red. Each constituency has some 60.000 voters. " Unless we have intimate mass contact with these voters, we will fail miserably to win the election," he writes. The job, therefore, is to make that contact in good time.
Social Scouts
TO assist in this work Fr, Vadak* kan has his Anti-Communist Publishing Institute, the only establishment of its kind in India. And he has his organisation, with all its many facets.
Its members divide each constituency into no less than 100 blocks in each of which are some 200 families and 600 voters. In every block a " primary unit" calling itself the "Social Scouts" is established. Members do active social service work among the people in their block, under elected leaders.
These leaders throughout each constituency meet weekly for discussion and to plan their future work. In Kerala state, 2,000 antiCommunist cells have been established.
Guiding this social campaign is the movement's daily paper Thozhilali (" The Worker"). The publishing institute is also turning out series of circular letters aimed at instructing the people in social action and against Communism.
The Communist Government is doing everything it can to counteract this influence. Fr. Vadakkan's office has been raided by police and the distribution of circulars has been interfered with.
A fund to aid this work now exists in Britain. The address is: Brian Carey, 80. King Edward Road, London, E.9.
Pat Dooley
SPARE a thought and a prayer
for Pat Dooley. Pat, although born in Yorkshire, had. as his name suggests. Irish parents. One may assume that he once had the Faith.
When he was still little more than a rebellious boy, Pat got drawn into the left-wing Socialist movement. In the early 1930's he joined the Communist Party with which he had been working for years. He became one of its most effective public speakers and most active of members.
At his public-speaking classes at Marx House, Clerkenwell Green, I.ondon, Pat taught would-be soapbox orators their speaking technique and the content of their speeches at one and the same time. In different circumstances he might have been a valuable member of the Catholic Evidence Guild.
He had all the likeable. loveable characteristics of the Irish, and these went to make him a highly entertaining speaker and excellent companion.
Early in World War H he became secretary, and later chairman. of the Communist-controlled Connolly Association with which he had already been long connected. He also edited the Associa• tion's paper, the " Irish Democrat."
Pat went to Czechoslovakia in 1949 as English editor of a Czech paper. and stayed there until 1953. In other words, he was there throughout the worst period of the persecution of the Church — " selling " the Czechoslovak Communist regime to the English-speaking world.
On the night of February 13, Pat, now 56 years old and still a prominent Communist, was chairing a political debate when he collapsed and died. He was cremated at South Essex Crematorium last Tuesday morning Spare a prayer for Pat