Peace Meeting

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25677, 14 December 1948, Page 4

Peace Meeting

If attending a peace meeting and voting for- a peace resolution is to do any good, those who attend and vote should at least be able to say that they came away with clearer ideas and a clearer sense of purpose. The resolution adopted by the meeting in Latimer square on Sunday was admirably framed. It is to be regretted that more citizens were not there to vote for it. But it is also and as much, or more, to be regretted that those who were there heard some things said which could not clear their ideas or help them to a clearer sense of the peace-lover’s purpose. -Mr John Roberts’s restatement of the pacifist’s negative and unrealistic position need be mentioned only in passing. “ The greatest service New “Zealanders could offer to the No “ More War movement would be to “ refuse to participate in an oversea war”: The sad fact is that it would be no service to peace at all. More damaging to the cause of peace

were suggestions of a more confusing kind—the suggestion of a Communist speaker that the recent dumping of potatoes exposes the root of war in the unsoundness of capitalist economics, and his suggestion that New Zealanders are being misled by the news agencies about the world situation. Mr Ostler may be supposed to know as well as the next man how the potatoes came to be dumped, or has as good an opportunity to know. Capitalist economics had as much to do with it as Julius Caesar. As for the news, since Mr Ostler illustrated what he said by reference to Berlin and the currency question, it will be enough to deal with the illustration. When the Western Powers—at long last—decided to stabilise the mark in the western zone, “ it was not reported ”, he said, that this decision breached the Potsdam agreement, which provided for the control of Germany as “an “ economic unit It was reported, and in the plainest terms. It was reported that the Western Powers had delayed this step till it could be delayed no longer, because they knew it was a step away from the policy laid down at Potsdam. When Moscow denounced it accordingly, Moscow’ was at once and explicitly reported. What was also reported, of course, was the fact not mentioned by Mr Ostler, that the Western Powers had sought earnestly and unrestingly to prevail on Russia to fulfil the economic provision of Potsdam and treat Germany as an economic unit; that Russia from first to last had pursued an independent economic policy, managing the trade, industry, and production of the eastern zone to suit herself; and that the Western Powers’ “ breach “ of the Potsdam agreement ”, in the end, was the breach of an agreement the Russians had flouted, refused to operate, and made inoperable. Peace and truth are bound up together; whoever speaks of one, at a peace meeting, should speak the other. Mr Ostler spoke mischief and would have his hearers believe he was a missioner of peace. What sort of peace?

REPORTING OF AIR CRASH SIR HAROLD JOHNSTON TO CONDUCT INQUIRY From Our Own Reporter WELLINGTON, December 13. A one-man commission to inquire into allegations that undue restrictions had been placed on representatives of the press in reporting the finding and recovery of bodies from the Electra aircraft which clashed on Mount Ruapehu on October 23 has been, appointed by the Government. Sir Harold Johnston, K.C., will be the commissioner. The inquiry will be held in Parliament Buildings next Thursday. Mr J. W. L. Gerken, deputy-registrar of the Supreme Court, Wellington, will act as secretary to the commission.