COEXISTENCE ADVISED

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27500, 6 November 1954, Page 7

COEXISTENCE ADVISED

Spender’s View Of Policy

(Rec. 10 p.m.) RICHMOND (Virginia), November 4. The Australian Ambassador to the United {States (Sir. Percy Spender) said today that the Western countries must “attune” themselves to living side by side for an indefinite period with societies differing substantially from their own. Addressing a women’s forum, Sir Percy Spender said that in his view there would not be a third world war, which, he said, could 'only end in a "Pyrrhic victory.” Referring to coexistence with communism, he said: ‘(I prefer to define it as the need for living together without war. It will be a twilight condition with recurring crises, the sporadic outbreak of ‘local’ hostilities, and a period of constant internal pressures and convulsions, while militant communism pursues its expansive ambitions.

“But I am one who is firming to the view that a third world war is becoming increasily unlikely. Science has made it too costly. “We of the West, freely advised of the almost incredibly devastating power of the weapons of mass destruction, know of this terrible cost, and I do not believe the Iron Curtain has been or can be held down firmly enough to prevent the same knowledge seeping through to the peoples of Communist States."