The Press THURSDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1948. Peace Meeting

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25679, 16 December 1948, Page 6

The Press THURSDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1948. Peace Meeting

Replies by Mr John Roberts and Mr A. Ostler to some comments here on remarks of theirs at Sunday’s peace meeting were printed yesterday. Their nature, rather than their substance, makes it desirable to say a little more. Mr Roberts says our comment was based on an “ indifferent report ”. The only difference between his report of himself and ours is the difference between a verbatim report and an accurate summary. The argument is precisely the same. The bracketed phrases show what did not appear : .n the summary. Mr Roberts had attended working class political and industrial meetings in Britain and had concluded that the workers generally were against a war with Russia (or in support of the present Greek Government; and the same was to be said of the French workers); and New Zealanders (the New Zealand trade unionists) could do most for peace by refusing to take part (send troops) in ail oversea war. The single comment was that this suggested service to peace would be no service at all; and it applies to Mr Roberts’s expanded argument exactly as it did to its summary equivalent. No doubt Mr Roberts is right: British unionists want no war with Russia. They are not alone in that. Only fools and fireeaters want war with Russia; and there are not very many of them. But Mr Roberts has seen enough of the world and its political sickness and shame to know that not wanting a war and refusing in any circumstances to fight a war will not stop a war—or will not stop an aggressor on his way. Mr Roberts and unionists and everybody else may with advantage think hard, and urge their statesmen to think hard, how to convince Russia that no people wants war with Russia, only a pacific and constructive agreement, but that no free people, at last, is willing to avoid battle by agreeing to be walked over. Such thinking and the action that would come of it could be a service to peace. Peace cannot be served by refusing to send armed forces oversea, in any cause, anywhere; that is just isolationism, just denial of the first principle of collective security, that an aggressor who attacks one pacific attacks every pacific country,' and that defence is a moral duty as well as self-interest. So much is to be said with respect for the good intentions expressed in a shallow pacifist argument. Mr Roberts’s opening sneer—that it was to be expected that “ The Press ” would damn with faint praise any meeting called to further the cause of world peace—may be more roughly dealt with. It was an ignorant sneer or a dis--honest one. It is as well to be quite plain. Mr Roberts was talking about the danger of a war with Russia and, the way to avoid it. That is what we refer to now. “The Press” has written on this subject, or on any connected subject, only with an anxious desire to penetrate the facts and objects of Russian policy, to extract the hopeful as well as the depressing truth, and to emphasise its belief that the effort to reach an understanding with Russia must not be abandoned or relaxed, though it may be frustrated over and over ag§un. Mr Roberts owes us an apology. As for Mr Ostler, he gave one illustration of his charge against the news agencies that serve the New Zealand press, that they mislead the people. He may be supposed to have thought it a good example. We answered him by exposing his statement as a completely false one. In his reply he did not attempt to sustain it, though he was expressly invited to. Nor did he admit that he had been wrong. What we have is the suggestion, this time, not that the news agencies are wicked but that editors are, and a scrap of autobiography to colour it. Mr Ostler may argue like that because he is a Communist or for any other reason; it doesn’t matter. Shifty argument is just shifty argument.