MANY PROBLEMS OF PEACE

Press, Volume LXXXI, Issue 24501, 26 February 1945, Page 6

MANY PROBLEMS OF PEACE

REFERENCE BY HON. D. G. SULLIVAN

BROADCAST FROM 8.8.C. Remarks on the post-war world were made by the Minister of Supply (the Hon. D. G. Sullivan) in a 8.8.C. broadcast recently. A recording was broadcast from main New Zealand stations' last evening. “In the preview I have been given of. the world after the war, whether in the field of international collaboration or in that of the internal reconstruction of any one country, there has been a complex and sometimes alarming combination of high hopes and lofty ideals on the one hand, and uncertainty, reaction, and even strife on the other,” said Mr Sullivan. “We live in moving, critical times, still caught up in the greatest war the world has ever known, and yet conscious that we are on the brink of an era of peace that may have more bearing on the fate of mankind than any other period of history. To be as close as I have been privileged to be to the centre both of world conflict and of world planning is to realise more profoundly than ever before how many problems lie awaiting our efforts to solve them beyond the purely military problem of the defeat of the armed forces of the countries which are our enemies." Mr Sullivan said that when he visited England as a boy he saw hardship. sacrifice, and struggle, but they were as nothing by comparison with what he had seen in the last few weeks or with what *he world might still have to endure unless everyone saw the danger signals. Price of Liberty

Visiting the New Zealand Expeditionary Force in Egypt and Italy, he had been reminded of the price his own country had paid by the rows of white crosses that every battle left behind it to signify the lives laid down far from home for the sake of liberty. In few places had he heard finer praise of New Zealand fighting men than in London, and praise from London was praise indeed. A city as close to battle as London, a country as remote from it as New Zealand, both knew the price of war. Citizens of the Dominion who had fought and died had gone far beyond the limits of simple patriotism and duty. Their fellows owed more than gratitude. They owed it to them that the price should never have to be paid again. The opportunity was before the world now, perhaps for the last time, to find the solution to the problem of which open warfare was a - horrible crisis—the problem that faced the peoples of the world of living together in peace and goodwill, said Mr Sullivan. There was no denying the ideals and the hopes that filled men now. but he was not so sure that all were yet prepared to take the steps, some of them unorthodox, some of them in a sense revolutionary, that were needed to translate hopes and ideals into working realities. He spoke of this from the experience of the International Civil Aviation conference at Chicago. Looking back on that assembly and giving due place to that which it should achieve, he was forced to a sense of disappointment at the divergence of opinions on this single but highly important facet of international collaboration. As a result. the conference failed to reach an agreement on the fundamental question of safeguarding the mighty power of aviation against its use for evil purposes It seemed to him that there was a growing need for men to apnly the same willingness to experiment boldly; to try new ways and procedures in building the foundations of a peaceful world, as they had applied to the building of machinery for victory in this war.