MUST FACE RISK OF WAR

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXVI, Issue 14639, 7 April 1948, Page 5

MUST FACE RISK OF WAR

free nations of THE WEST Determined Opposition To Communism Light On Present World Crisis (Special to The Times—By Wickham Steed) PH h? r ?F ary mortals feel bewilderea oy the rapid sequence of events '-he international crisis—for crisis A undeniably is—and are anxious cmout its further course, I think hey are hardly to be blamed. During the past month, there has been a senes of developments which have been more than “incidents” that has Ifft us all a little breathless. We nave not had time to take stock of one position before another has supervened. From February 20 onwards, the Communist seizure of power in Czechoslovakia has surprised and startled the Western world. It was felt to be a challenge which the free nations of the West could not ignore.

At Washington legislative proceedings were speeded up to sanction the European Recovery Programme; and at their Conference in Brussels, the British, French and Benelux Delegates succeeded, with a smooth swiftness rarely equalled in any international gathering, in drafting the terms of an economic, political and defensive pact of Western European Union which was signed on March 17.

Yet even more swiftly came from Prague the tragic news of the death of Mr Jan Masaryk, the Czechoslovak Foreign Secretary, who was deservedly one of the best-loved men in the world. I, who had been his friend for 28 years as I had been a friend of his father, the Presidentliberator, _ for a still longer period, am convinced that Jan Masaryk ended his life because he could not bear the Communist pretence that his father would have approved of the destruction of Czechoslovak democratic freedom. Effect of Masaryk’s Death The effects of Jan Masaryk’s death could be seen in the prompt agreement at Paris between 'the 16 States interested in the Marshall Plan and also in the conclusion of the Brussels Treaty of Western Union. I fancy too that they have influenced the decision of President Truman to address a joint session of the United States Congress, at the very moment when the Brussels Treaty v/as being signed. The President’s promise that the ynited States will aid the free countries of Western Europe in the defence of their freedom, a promise loudly cheered by the whole Congress and his emphatic call for universal military training so that his country may be better fitted to withstand any further threat to its liberties, can only have sprung from the conviction that the present threat is insistent and real.

Are we therefore in sight of another armed conflict, of the Third World War? No prudent observer of world affairs will deny that danger exists, nor will he affirm that it cannot be averted. Soviet Russia alone could answer this question decisively; and hitherto there has been no means of judging what her answer is likely to be. President Truman’s address to Congress v/as a serried indictment of Russian policy since the end of the war, but it left no room for doubt that neither the United States nor the governments of Western Europe have closed or wish to close the door to an agreement with Soviet Russia on any terms that will safeguard their own freedom and foster peace. General Smuts, the great South African statesman, has called for a frank and friendly talk with Russia as “from man to man,” and Dr Evatt of Australia has claimed that the United Nations, not “power politics” should be used as a path to an understanding . Speaking Same Language

With the arguments of these eminent and responsible men, everybody who cares for peace must be in substantial agreement. My only comment upon the proposal of General Smuts is that a talk from man to man assumes that those who talk can sneak the same language or at least * languages which can be accurately translated. Here lies the difficulty in dealing with Soviet Russia. Her rulers speak and appear to think in terms of Communist ideology which nobody has yet succeeded in translating into the idiom of Western democratic freedom. And Dr Evatt’s proposal that the United Nations be employed to bring about an agreement seems hardly to take sufficient account of the fact —recorded in President Truman’s address—that in the past year or two the Russian veto has been used 21 times to prevent agreement. My own answer to the question of whether we are in sight of another armed conflict is tentative. It is hedged about with “buts and ifs.” If certain conditions are fulfilled, I should answer “no.” But if these conditions be not fulfilled, I cannot say that I should regard peace as a maior probability of the future. The first condition is that the free of the Wet, including the United States, should remain absolutely firm in their determination to face the risk of war rather than tolerate the undermining or the destruction of the principles of human liberty on which their civilisation is founded, and that they should allow no doubt to arise on this score. The second condition is that their policy should be onencyed and circumspect, never yielding to a temptation to gain a merely tactical advantage.