PRESERVATION OF PEACE

Press, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 26812, 18 August 1952, Page 8

PRESERVATION OF PEACE

SIR CARL BERENDSEN’S WARNING

“ WAR PROBABLE RATHER THAN POSSIBLE ”

“The only way to preserve peace against a third world war is to make ourselves strong enough quickly enough; that might deter the potential aggressor,” said Sir Carl Berendsen in an interview yesterday afternoon. Sir Carl Berendsen, who was New Zealand Ambassador at Washington for nearly eight years and New Zealand delegate to the United Nations, said he thought, in the long, run, war was probable rather than possible, but he did not believe it was inevitable if the free nations proceeded to strengthen themselves rapidly and adequately enough.

“United Nations is the most noble venture of man to-day and holds our highest hopes of peace in the future,” he said. “It would be stupid and wicked to ignore the potentialities of the United Nations, but to imagine it can do what it cannot do might well be suicidal.”

The primary objective of the United Nations was to preserve world peace, if necessary by force. It had not yet E roved itself able to preserve peace y force, and to that extent had not achieved its primary object. But short of that essential requirement it had done, could do and would do many things of the greatest importance to mankind in the economic, social, and humanitarian field as well as in the peace-making activities of conciliation, arbitration, and discussion. In this way the United Nations had already had conspicuous success. “No one should imagine that the United Nations, as at present constituted, can save the free world from the grave threat with which it is confronted by Communism,” he added. “We must rely on our own right hand and the right hands of our friends, particularly on the close and continued association of the British Commonwealth with the United States—a collaboration upon which the fate of man depends. Nevertheless it is the duty of every man and woman to support the United Nations.” American People Praised Sir Carl Berendsen said that after living in the United States for nearly eight years he and Lady Berendsen had left the country with the deepest admiration for the high moral qualities of the people of the United States and their integrity in their approach to world problems. “Both of us have the warmest affection for the people themselves, and we hope to live a third of each year in the United States,” he added.

Security in the Pacific area for New Zealand and Australia lay in strength in unity with the United States, he said. “We in New Zealand, with our kinsfolk in Australia, are a little group of occidental people thousands of miles away from the homeland, living cheek by jowl with the peoples of Asia, who constitute more than half the population of the world. For centuries the Asiatic countries have been underprivileged and under-nourished, but now they are aflame with the intention to improve. The whole area is in a state of flux, and the cauldron might well boil over in our direction.” Australia and New Zealand had signed a mutual-assistance treaty with the United States, and unless the British Commonwealth nations held together with the United States at this critical juncture all countries concerned would be separately enslaved and annihilated, he added. Though Sir Carl Berendsen declined to discuss the Presidential election campaign in the United States, he said that General Eisenhower and Mr Adlai Stevenson were both admirable men and neither was inimical to the interests of the British Commonwealth, as were some of the other Presidential candidates.