ONLY BEGINNING

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 147, 23 June 1945, Page 7

ONLY BEGINNING

SUCCESS AT 'FRISCO

SAN FRANCISCO, June 21

Field-Marshal Smuts said that UNCIO had succeeded, but it was only the beginning of the monumental task of rebuilding the sad, disillusioned world.

After the last war, he said, the vic.torious Powers had built on shadows; this time the Allies had tried, with one or two exceptions, to build on the realities of industrial power, and recognised more clearly the need to deal with the economic causes of war. So far the nations had been dealing not with solutions, but with international machinery, and had not really touched the central problem which was the restoration of Europe. "Hitler swept that unhappy land to chaos," said Field-Marshal Smuts. "Now Hitler is a suicide and the chances are that he has brought Europe to the point of suicide too. "Few men realise the extent of the destruction of life and the means of life, and of ancient institutions on the Continent. Here is the mother of our western civilisation broken, disorganised. . drifting—its industrial power . smashed, its economic and political life convulsed, its. peoples cold, and millions homeless, hungry, and dejected. "This is not only national collapse: it is spiritual collapse and cannot be solved by food, fuel, and alliances alone. Europe must somehow be rescued, her wounds healed, and her hope in herself restored." (