CONFERENCE OPENED

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27472, 5 October 1954, Page 13

CONFERENCE OPENED

Prime Minister’s Address (Rec. 12.30 a.m.) OTTAWA, Oct. 4. Mr Louis St. Laurent, Canada’* Prime Minister, today assured Asian nations that the West would help them in their drive to raise their living standards. Mr St. Laurent, in an address formally opening the five-day Colombo Plan Conference in the Canadian Parliament, said that the alternative to building a world of sanity, peace and fuller realisation of life was “dreadful, almost beyond conception, in the age of the hydrogen bomb.” Mr St. Laurent said: “To avoid this alternative and to realise the possibilities for the fuller life which lies before us will require of all of us our best efforts in accordance with our individual endowments and national inheritances.” He noted that the Colombo Plan had steadily grown to the present 14-nation size, including most nations of South and South-east Asia, and also the 1 United States, and said this was a sign of strength for, when new members joined an organisation, then charter nations could feel they had started something worthwhile. He said the Asian nations themselves were carrying the heaviest part of the load in work for the barwrment of their people. “We of the West understand and share the motives of our Asian partners, for we have had some experience ourselves of the degree of hard work and technical organisation needed to raise living standards,” he said. ‘We also are engaged in effort s ? like theira to make our own people healthier and happier."