October 27, 1968

The Spiritual Summit Conference ended in Calcutta on October 26, 1968. October 27th was Merton's last day before he travelled on to New Delhi. He celebrates mass at a private home and notes later that the "air-raid sirens were being tested - for the imaginary war with Pakistan".

Suez Canel and Yugoslovia
Merton makes a couple of journal notes in reference to world events:

"There is a firing at Suez and Tito says there will be a Third World War if the Russians try to take over Yugoslovia, etc., etc. Everyone has long ceased to listen to any of it."

At the time Egypt, the PLO, and Israel were engaged in a limited "War of Attrition" along the Suez Canal. Just one of the many "hot-spots" of the day. In Eastern Europe things had been pretty tense since the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. NATO was becoming increasingly concerned that Soviet "interventions" in Romania and Yugoslovia were imminent (Tito was probably right about the likely consequences!). Fortunately for all these further "interventions" did not take place.

TTFN... Rob

"The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less." Vaclav Havel
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Czechoslovakia - 1968