EDEN SPEAKS ON TELEVISION

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27665, 23 May 1955, Page 11

EDEN SPEAKS ON TELEVISION

Prospects Of Talks With Russia (NJS. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 10 p.m.) LONDON, May 21. Sir Anthony Eden told an estimated television audience of 10,000,000 tonight that he hoped a meeting with Russia would take place in a few weeks* time. In the last of the party appeals presented over the 8.8. C. Sir Anthony Eden used a “heart to heart” technique to tell viewers that “I am absolutely convinced that a meeting now or within the next two or three months at the highest level could be an excellent send-off for the programme of work which lies ahead.” Sir Anthony Eden spoke without a script in a “fireside” atmosphere -made more realistic by phrases such as “I want ' to talk to you alone for a few minutes” and “while you and I have been talking here tonight.” Occasionally the cameras turned to catch the Prime Minister in profile as he made a little direct criticism of his Labour opponents and the urbanity and well-bred reasonableness of his case seemed to convey the impression that'll would be “bad form” to yote for any other party than Conservative.

In his expression of hope for world peace from the coming Big Four meeting at the summit, Sir Anthony Eden said: “We are ready for these talks and I hope they will take place in a few weeks’ time. I would have been anxious if talks at the highest level had taken place in such, conditions that if they had failed the international situation would have become more instead of less tense. But there is no danger of .that.” “An admirable programme of work has been agreed between the Powers concerned and I hope it will be generally acceptable, and that as a result of that there will be meetings at every level.

“I do sincerely believe there are opportunities today greater than any we have known since the war. It is up to all of us to seize them. At least we shall be around a table and can discuss the problems that shadow our time—the hydrogen bomb and the future of Germany. Perhaps plans can be made out which will help to remove them all from the sphere of danger.” Referring to present hopes of peace the Prime Minister described last year’s Geneva conference as the turning point. “At Geneva T was very worried because it did not seem to me that the conference was going well and if it did not I feared that the Indo-China dispute would spread into a much wider problem which might engulf us all. “That happily did not happen. It may well be that Geneva was the turning point, even in the Far East, because since then the situation, which is still dangerous, is not so acute as it was then.”

Of the Paris agreements and Germaify’s future. Sir Anthony Eden said: “I trust and believe the hatchet is finally buried between France and Germany.”