“Perhaps Only Hope Of Peace”— MOVE TO PREVENT INDIA’S WALK-OUT FROM THE EMPIRE

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 October 1948, Page 7

“Perhaps Only Hope Of Peace”— MOVE TO PREVENT INDIA’S WALK-OUT FROM THE EMPIRE

(Recd. 11.15 a.m.) NEW YORK, October 13. The London correspondent of the United Press says that the Ministers of the British Commonwealth began negotiations today to head off India’s threatened walk-out and thus preserve a solid anti-Commun-ist front. . Although the conference on economics was the official business of the day, Australia and New Zealand behind the scenes privately warned the delegates to keep India in the Commonwalth or face the growth of Communism m Asia. The issue was recognised as being so grave that one delegate suggested that a representative of the conference ask the United States for advice if no agreement was reached. In the private talks, the New Zealand Prime Minister, Mr P. Fraser, told the delegates: “The greatest, perhaps the only hope of peace,” was to end the Indian revolt against the Commonwealth.

Mr Fraser said, bluntly, that the most important problem facing the conference was to maintain the antiCommunist chain of nations by keeping India in connection with the other nations of the Commonwealth. • Mr Fraser and Dr Evatt (Australia) tried for several'hours to convince the Indian Prime Minister, Pandit Jawarharlal Nehru, to advise his Government to stay in the Commonwealth, but Pandit Nehru explained that, he was bound by his electoral promises to work tor India’s complete independence. India Seeks Co-operation Two thousand Indian and British well-wishers who packed Kingsway Hall last night heard Pandit Nehru say that he wanted the closest cooperation between the Indians and the British.

Reviewing India’s violent entry into independence,, Pandit Nehru said: “We passed through horror beyond words. I doubt if I could have survived but for the fact that Gandhi was there.” He said he was not Sure what form co-operation between India and Britain would take, but .it would be based on the sense.Bf comradeship engendered by India’s admiration for Britain’s wisdom in giving her independence. /

It had been fortunate for India and Britain, said Pandit Nehru, that Lord Mountbatten had been in India during the transition period. Few persons had earned such love in India as Lady Mountbatten for the way she had moved about the refugee camps in the days of horror. Menace of Communism

The menace of Communism was one of the big themes at the meetings yesterday of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference at No. .O Downing Street, says the Daily Mail’s political correspondent. There seems to have been a strong conviction that an essential answer to the Communist challenge is to show people, all over the world, that the democratic system affords a better way of life by—

(1) Raising the standards of living. (2) Maintaining high levels of. employment; and (3) Fostering organisations like trade unions.

The News Chronicle suggested that the Commonwealth Prime Ministers should be invited to visit the British industrial centres. “It is in places like the Tyneside, Manchester, and Cardiff, not the stuffy conference halls of London, that the most vivid impressions of Britain, at work are to be obtained,” it said.