CHANGED OUTLOOK

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22198, 7 December 1946, Page 7

CHANGED OUTLOOK

SO VIET_ PRESS EMPHASIS_ON PEACE MORE CONCILIATORY TONE LONDON, Dec. 5. A marked change is noted in the general tone of the Soviet press, reports the Moscow correspondent of the Manchester Guardian, Mr. Alexander Werth. The Soviet press is now devoting more space than any other press to the activities of the United Nations and it is plain that every effort is being made to cultivate “United Nations’ consciousness” in Russia. Izvestia, reporting the progress at the Foreign Ministers’ Conference, is conciliatory in its tone and emphasises that the Russians have never believed that there was any ground for the pessimism that followed the Paris Conference. because "in the last analysis all the Great Powers are equally anxious to arrive at a peace settlement.” The correspondent points out that this is a far cry from the theory about the inevitability of two worlds-—the theory which the Russians are now denouncing as particularly pernicious. The thesis is that peace has many enemies and M. Molotov’s disarmament proposals in New York have done a great deal to provide a rallying point for the real friends of peace and to confuse and confound its enemies. It is stated that an effort is being made to mobilise world opinion in support of the Soviet, which is now declared by the Russian press to be the champion of good causes—disarmament, the outlawing of the atomic bomb, the removal of racial discrimination, and the elimination of Fascist hide-outs such as Franco Spain.