BUDAPEST LETTER
457
general indifference that weighs down the system. To the old ones,
these, like the abortion rates, are problems of a collapsing morality.
The younger, many of whom seem far more serious than their Western
contemporaries, want rather to get things done and
to
get ahead, and to
them morality is also a question of morale. Some of the left-wingers
are contemptuous, after all the sacrifices made, of the anticlimax of a
tepid "wa shing-machine socialism." Much more to the right, and also
more practical, a young technician I met put it this way: "When I
spend months designing some equipment for export and then because
nobody cares it takes three years to build the prototype, by which time
the British or the Swiss have nabbed the market and the thing is use–
less, I go up the wall." To somepne like
him,
as to a left-winger
hungry for action, a new era of enterprise would seem a godsend. It
might even move the man by the Danube.
On the way out I was prepared for all kinds of questions at
the border. But the customs man merely inquired about presents I
was taking, and of those asked to see just one thing, a w,ooden
candlestick carved in the shape of a peasant doll. He weighed it in his
hand, and felt round its base, looking for smuggled gold or micro–
film, I suppose. Then he let me go. Driving back to Austria, I was
listening to the jazz program Radio Budapest puts out apparently at
the same time as Free Europe, in an effort to lure young listeners
away from Munich. I'm told the experiment has proved successful.
Reception is much better, you see.
Paul Neuburg
