PEACE MEETING

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25678, 15 December 1948, Page 4

PEACE MEETING

CRITICISM BY “THE PRESS” REPLIES BY TWO SPEAKERS “Notwithstanding the lip service given to the cause of world peace by many New Zealand newspapers it was to be expected that the editor of ‘Tfie Press’ would damn with faint praise any meeting that had for its objective the furthering of that cause,” said Mr John Roberts, president of the Canterbury Trades Council of the Federation of Labour and of the North Canterbury Labour Representation Committee. The comment in the leading article was, he alleges, based upon a very indifferent report. “I stated that I had recently attended working-class political and industrial gatherings in Great Britain, and, as a result had formed the opinion that there was not likely to be a war at present because, at least in two countries. Great Britain and France, the organised workers could not be relied upon to arouse any enthusiasm to fight the Soviet Union, or to fight in support of the present Fascist Greek Government, and that the best contribution that the New Zealand Trade Union Movement could make toward world peace was to oppose the sending of troops overseas.” said Mr Roberts. “If, as I believe, the lack of enthusiasm in British and French workers for war with the Soviet Union has delayed an open declaration of war the International Trade Union Movement would be doing a service to the world if it called upon its affiliations to oppose a third world war.” Mr A. Ostler’s Comment ■‘l am too well aware of the habits of newspaper editors in the allocation of space in their columns—to themselves and to any person who disagrees with them—to be drawn into any interchange with ‘The Press’,” said Mr A. Ostler, a member of the New Zealand Commifnist Party, in a statement to “The Press” last evening. “However. I will say that, while your second leading article suggests that I have put forward certain views which you imply I believe because I am a Communist, in actual fact I am a Communist because I grew to see things this way from first-hand experience.

“For instance, I learned the ways of New Zealand newspapers as a member of the staff of New Zealand’s largest morning paper in 1938—a job which played a large part in showing me the necessity of resigning from the paper and joining the Communist Party. “I did both,” Mr Ostler said.