PROFESSOR J. D. BERNAL

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25916, 23 September 1949, Page 7

PROFESSOR J. D. BERNAL

SOVIET SAID TO BE MISREPRESENTED “ BRITISH SCIENTISTS HAVE BEEN VICTIMS ” (Rec. 9 p.m.) LONDON, September 22. Professor J. D. Bernal, the British physicist who returned recently from a peace conference in Moscow, told a public meeting last night that British scientists “have been victims of a campaign of misrepresentation about the Soviet Union.” This campaign, he said, had been “as freely as. but far more effectively conducted than, those of the late Dr. Goebbels.” Professor Bernal was defending his statement in Moscow that science was being used in capitalist countries for the preparation of war. “I would be ashamed to have had any part in the schemes for combining against our old ally—hatched, as Mr Churchill now boasts, as early as the Battle of Stalingrad.” he said. “The great people of the Soviet Union deserve better of us than that. They deserve bur help in building up a peaceful world.” The Dean of Canterbury (Dr. Hewlett Johnson) said that Russia did not need war or war preparations to keep its economy going. It was in fact spending only 17 per cent, of its income on war-like preparations—less than before the war. “Why doesn’t Mr Truman accept Mr Stalin’s challenge to meet him?” asked Dr. Johnson. “Britain and other countries should help to call a peace conference.”