CHANGED DEFENCE NEEDS OF BRITISH COMMONWEALTH

Greymouth Evening Star, 16 October 1948, Page 5

CHANGED DEFENCE NEEDS OF BRITISH COMMONWEALTH

(Rec. 11 a.m.) LONDON, Oct. 15. The Glasgow Herald, reviewing Mr Ernest Bevin’s statement that the key to a century of peace lay in the great problem of the Indian Ocean, said that too much was at stake to allow the differences between India and Pakistan and India and South Africa to prevent a Commonwealth agreement on a unified defence policy to meet “the greater threat.” The paper adds: “There is an obvious need of maximum co-operation. All the Commonwealth Governments’ defence line no longer starts in London and ends in Wellington. It stretches out to a new world and must include all of the Middle East that lies outside the iron curtain.” The next move rests with the Soviet Government “and there is more than a possibility that the next move will be southwards and eastwards to Moscow rathei’ than to the West.” The paper adds that Britain should adapt herself where defence policy is concerned to a set of radicallyaltered circumstances.