WORLD FOCUS

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 129, 28 November 1945, Page 7

WORLD FOCUS

THE PACIFIC AREA

ARENA OF GREAT FORCES

(Special P.A. Correspondent.)

LONDON, November 26.

"The focal point of the world in the next 100 years, I respectfully suggest, will he in the Pacific. It will be there that the great militarisms meet. On the one hand yoji have the great rising nations of Asia and on the other the forcible drive of the three great Powers that emerged from this war. I sometimes ask myself 'Will they clash?'" said Mr. Bevin, speaking at a farewell party in London for the New Zealand Minister of Labour, Mr. Webb.

Mr. Bevin had opened his speech with a reminder that this war had been much wider than the last. Then it was a question of dealing with a peace treaty for Germany and it was virtually a European problem. "Now I do not know whether the East isn't more difficult than Europe. "Whether these forces will clash," said Mr. Bevin, "all depends on what we do in. the next iwo years. If we do right they won't. If we do wrong they will, and all I can say is I pray God we do right.

"I do feel, however, that we must meet Asia without colour prejudice and without the old superior attitude to the Asiatic. I believe Asia can be guided along the path of self-govern-ment and progress if she is met, helped, and understood; and if instead of having in the background the divisions and boundaries that threaten the world we can give the lie to the old adage that east and west can never meet we establish our policy that east and west can contribute to the peace of the whole planet. That will be my aim. and I shall value the opinions of New Zealand and Australia looking at the same things that are near to them and at other things that are far off.

SECRET OF DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY.

"We have lived in the middle of a whirligig of world events, and statesmen sometimes could not see the wood for the trees." But, he added, the British Commonwealth had a great advantage. It was world-wide and he very much appreciated the opinions of its Ministers of External Affairs. He did not want the Commonwealth to be a bloc which was hostile to any other bloc or association of nations of the world. On the other hand, he could not help thinking that the Commonwealth had found a secret of democracy and liberty that no other group of nations had discovered. It had de-

veloped kindred laws with no power at the centre yet with a great heart of responsibility.

The British association of peoples had found a basis which he thought could make a contribution to a wider world association 'if other nations would adopt it. It was a difficult row to hoe.

Remarking that no laws were really accepted by a people unless they voted for them, Mr. Bevin said that one of the troubles of the League of Nations arid one that would confront the United Nations was agreements. Its agreements would be of Governments, not ratified by the individual action of citizens. Agreements had to be brought down to the citizen himself to get moral sanction behind world law.

The discoveries of science and the very force of events would make nations in the next five years settle down carefully to consider the right way to control them. They would never be controlled by mere agreements between Governments, but by the actions of citizens voting and in their assemblies determining to what use such discoveries should be put. "We are living on the eve of great events, of great chances in the whole world, and a complete change in our concepts." he said. He was convinced that if the Commonwealth idea could be introduced into Europe—in which he could not see a single frontier that was economically sound—it would save her. Europe was still the cradle of civilisation and culture, and he believed there was a great renaissance coming if political and economic arrangements could be made to allow the people to live as free as in the British Commonwealth and yet remain associated together in the great task that statesmen had got tc face in the next two years.