AT REVOLVER POINT

Evening Post, Issue 37, 13 August 1934, Page 8

AT REVOLVER POINT

SUPPRESSION OF TRUTH

THE WORLD OF TODAY

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, July 6. Speaking at the International Universities' Conference at' Oxford, Professor Gilbert Murray said:— '' Tho increaso of violence is one of the characteristics of.the present time. There is no more suppression of truth now than I have ever known. There are more people than ever, in the ordinary 'sense of tho word,, innocent of crime now in prison or iii. exile in different parts of the world. Also there has been a l'oscrudcscondo of tho abominable practice of torture in prison, especially of untried people. In addition, there has been more oppression of minorities than for a very great time in tho past. There is this element of violence in the air. I believe that violence is the great enemy of the sort of thing we stand for.

"In an atmosphere of violence everything for which wo stand, and in which we believe, is made powerless. Wo want truth. It is a big blow to us if we may only say what the man with a revolver wants us to say. It is important to the future of civilisation -that there should be an international association of universities. They stand for the intellectual side of life, believing that' a man should count by what he is and not by what he possesses." Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Colombia University and President of tho Carnegio Endowment for International Peace, speaking at the Pilgrims' Dinner, said that if liberty was to bo crushed by compulsion in the generation which lies ahead of us, it could only bo. because tho Englishspeaking peoples had failed in their great task. "The English-speaking peoples have never had so great a responsibility resting upon them as at this moment," ho said. "Those principles of social order and of Government which they had supposed was slowly conquering the world, and would eventually conquer the ■ world, aro now almost everywhere held in check. Outside of Western Europo, tho British Commonwealth of Nations, and the United States, these principles are no longer looked upon as commanding, much less as coming to control, tho life of other peoples. My hope and confident belief is that tho English-speaking peoples will rise to this great emergency in all thoir might." '