BRITAIN’S POLICY

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 March 1946, Page 10

BRITAIN’S POLICY

ACTING WITH FIRMNESS AND PATIENCE SPEECH BY MR. BEVIN LONDON, March 17. Mr. E. Bevin, Foreign Secretary, in a speech at a dinner at Port Talbot, said that the three different philosophies of Britain, America and Russia would adjust themselves in time if the nations were patient and were not dogmatic about them. He said: “If one or other seeks to destroy the others, then you get pandemonium. My task, therefore, will be to act, I hope, with firm conviction, but toleration.” Mr Bevin emphasised that there were no greater friends in the world than Mr Vyshinsky and himself. “I personally .never had a cross word with Mr Vyshinsky,” he said. “But when a problem is put on the table, then the facts, as you see them, must be stated, and a decision taken; but there must be no personal feeling.” Referring to Mr Churchill’s Fulton speech, Mr Bevin said: “I want to assure everybody that there was no consultation with the Government. We were not a party thereto. Mr Churchill made his speech on his own personal responsibility. I would say this: It would be a bad thing for foreign affairs if a nation’s foreign policy turned, not on its foreign policy, but. on a speech that some individual might make. I think that would be extremely dangerous.”

Mr Bevin concluded: — “I do not believe, that the world wants war again. I never knew when the world did want war. Every time war has broken out, if it had been left to a free vote of the people, it would never have happened. I will do nothing to set one lot of people against another. I will do nothing that even savours of aggression, and I appeal to other countries, whatever their historical response, to eschew aggression, either by propaganda, .or wars of nerves, or by action which keeps other countries on the jump. I appeal to them—and in the name of God, humanity has earned it—to let the old world settle down!”