INTERNATIONAL ISSUES

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26092, 20 April 1950, Page 3

INTERNATIONAL ISSUES

ADDRESS BY PROFESSOR SUTHERLAND “The world in 1950” was the subject of an address given by Professor I. L. G. Sutherland to a Workers’ Educational Association class last evening. The lecture was the first of two in a series for Workers Educational Association classes arranged in co-opera-tion with the United Nations Association to study in the main the “food and people” protect proposed by UNESCO for world discussion. “It seems that just as man spent the nineteenth century in building up the form of the nation state, so he must spend the twentieth century in building up the forms of international organisation,” Professor Sutherland said. “The world has already been internationalised at the material level through the work of scientists and engineers. So far as communication and transportation are concerned physical distance has been virtually abolished, but the old differences in the mens minds and the lack of understanding between nations remain. The one world is a dangerously divided world politically, and a new and terrible urgency is given to the task of international organisation by atomic and biological weapons, and the possible hydrogen bomb.” „ . ... Changes in human affairs had been extraordinarily rapid in the first half of the century. Professor Sutherland said. Some changes were in the direction of human welfare; others brought a threat to the continuation of civilisation, and even threatened the destruction of all life on this planet. A feature of the human situation was the change in the state of rigid belief. The scientific view of the world, had led to the disintegration of many major Christian beliefs and the growth of a non-supernatural way of looking at man and his problems. Other features of the world in 1950 were the coming into being of the welfare State, the'growth of social justice in the democratic countries, the rise of nationalism among the non-white people of the world, the decline of imperialism, and of the rule of the superior white man. .... . “So far as science itself is concerned, we have the paradox that man has learned how to control physical nature, but has not learned how to control himself and his own social life, Professor Sutherland said. ‘‘The sciences of man have made marked advances, but can the knowledge be applied in time before man destroys himself by new means of warfare?”