ANTI-COMMUNISM IN AMERICA

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25945, 27 October 1949, Page 4

ANTI-COMMUNISM IN AMERICA

VISITING LECTURER’S VIEWS RACIAL RELATIONS DISCUSSED The Americans’ attitude ’ towards Communism and racial segregation in their own country was discussed yesterday in an interview by Mr J. B. S, Coats, an Englishman who is visiting New Zealand on a lecturing tour arranged by the Theosophical Society. Mr Coats spent three years in America. He had come from America with mind and heart full of admiration and appreciation, said Mr Coats. No job was too big for the Americans; if they had wanted an Auckland harbour bridge built, they wduld have built one before now. “It is because of my true affection for the American people and their country, with all their tremendous potentialities and influence in so many fields to-day, that I would like to see her achieve an even greater manifestation of the splendid ethic contained in her own Constitution.”

Anyone with a point of view which was free, modern, forward-looking or visionary was likely to be branded as a fellow-traveller of the Russians, said Mr Coats. Persons Who spoke against the Constitution of the United States were suspect, and the feeling had spread that the Constitution, in spite of its many amendments, was inviolable.

Particularly in the Civil Service persona had been compelled to swear allegiance to the Constitution or lose their jobs. Many had refused to take this oath because they believed it infringed political freedom. “It is the

more honest ones who lose their jobs. People in the pay of another Power would take any oath it suited them to,” said Mr Coats. Two professors known to Mr Coats at the University of Washington had lost their jobs, one because he had belonged to the Communist Party in his youth, and the other because of his liberal views. Asked whether he considered racial segregation had helped to foster Communism in America. Mr Coats said he thought it would tend to do so. The “Jim Crow” laws in Washington created a bad impression among the overseas visitors, including foreign diplomats and officials, to America’s capital city. “Every American thinks of Washington as the capital of the world’s greatest democracy, but few of them see in this a complete denial of democracy.” Coloured people in the- South had, in theory, the right to vote, but in practice they dared not exercise it.

“Bogy of Inter-marriage” When confronted with this negation of democracy, white Americans raised the bogy of inter-marriage. Even In the North, where there was no declared apartheid, coloured persons were told in hotels that there were no rooms available. In certain states the notice. “We reserve the right to serve whom we choose,” was directed mainly against coloured persons. In fairness to the whites, however, he would say that a few of the coloured persons had earned their race' a bad reputation. Mr Coats said he believed the whites’ attitude was changing. A coloured boy in a State where there was no college for non-Europeans had been granted permission to study medicine at a “white” university, the University of Arkansas, he thought. He was made to sit in a cubicle by himself in a corner of the lecture room, but the other students, recognising the absurdity of this, tore it down. He had been in Oklahoma when a football team arrived from the north to play a college team. The northern team included two coloured members, but the Tulsa team raised no objection. “I was told that two years ago the Tulsa students would not have played against them,” said Mr Coats.

Theosophy he described as a blend of religion, philosophy, and science, with no dogma. Among its adherents were Buddhists, Moslems. Hindus, and Christians. The basic ethics of most religions, stripped of their dogma, were similar, said Mr Coats—“much the same as all men looking alike with no clothes on.”

Mr Coats left for Dunedin yesterday. having arrived in Christchurch from Wellington bv steamer express in the morning. After lecturing in Dunedin, Oamaru and Timaru he will return to Christchurch on November 19.