ERA OF WORLD PEACE IS A LONG WAY AWAY--SIR PATRICK DUFF

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22622, 27 April 1948, Page 4

ERA OF WORLD PEACE IS A LONG WAY AWAY--SIR PATRICK DUFF

'Wiser fo Forget Utopia and Remember Czechoslovakia'

“Ugly lightnings are flickering ominously up and down the world’s thunder-dark horizons. . For Britain and for all British peoples, both for the sake of their own continued existence as well as for the sake of their mission for the world, until the era of world peace comes, the problem is how to strengthen the national charac- | ter by adding the habit of preparedness to native fortitude in | adversity. The era of world peace is a long way away. We will be ! wiser to forget Utopia and remember Czechoslovakia,” the High Commissioner for the United Kingdom in New Zealand, Sir Patrick Duff, advised members of the Gisborne Chamber of Commerce in the Bon Accord Lounge last night.

“The altitude of Russia towards the comity of nations Is disconcerting, and the tyranny which she imposes on her small neighbours is tragic.' 1 Sir Patrick Duff pointed out 'flat the frame of mind which | it betokens is no novelty for her. I “At different times in history, wher Russia herself was attacked she ha: ! played a manful and a costly part at a partner in resistance to a Napoleon or a Kaiser or a Hitler But. aparl from these episodes of collaboration Russia, for nearly 900 years, despite the unsuccessful effort of Peter the Great to reorientate her ideas, has set her face away from the mode of thought and the line of development of Western Cnristian civilisation. it is alien to them; and they hate it. 'ln more recent times, the vinegar of the doctrines of Marx and Lenin glories in being incapable of mixing with the oil of those civilisations of which Britain, New Zealand, the rest of the British Commonwealth and Empire, together with several countries of Western Europe, the United States of America, South Africa and most of the rest of the world, are part. Attitude of Soviet a Challenge “We should have no complaint whatever on the score that it did not mix. But, at present, its antagonism has become so aggressive, as witness the sepulchral fate which has been imposed by the Soviet on Poland, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Rumania, Albania, and, within the last month or so Czechslovakia; as witness the fifth columns actively and insidiously inspired within so many other States; as to constitute a purposeful challenge to all peoples whose civilisations are based on Western Christianity or on any beliefs other than undiluted Marxism and the police state.” The attitude of the Soviet regime was a challenge which neither the members of the British Commonwealth and Empire nor the United States of America, nor free peoples anywhere, however much they all yearned for peace, could ignore. This attitude and the tactics which gave effect to it, were not new. “To resist the rabid infection of the death-struck creed of communism it was necessary for all wholesome goodneighbourly and pacific societies to draw together. “Britain has Taken the Lead” “On the impoverished remains of the economic world arid on the struggling new growth, the communistic hordes nibble and gnaw and push forward,

here a little and there a little, purposefully to fret and to consume away all hopes of recovery,” Sir Patrick continued. “We need a fence to keep them back. We need to see to it that none of their ethic of conspiracy corrupts our own garrison or acts within our own society like poison in the well and ashes in the bread. “Britain has taken the lead in seeking by means' of the Western Union to create a fence which will preserve sweet and sound pastures, war-ravished though they be, from the corroding onslaught of communism. “As Field-Marshal Viscount Montgomery has said ‘ln the hands of strength are the keys of peace.’ But it would be a pretty passive and complacent attitude on the part of those who are exposed to the common dangers if they were content to sit back and watch Great Britain’s people always and practically unaided be the shock troops of the free world’s battle for survival. “These are, after all, the people who so recently, and at such unimaginable cost, held the fort; these are the people who. so recently, women and children and everything they possessed within 20 miles of the enemy, fought earliest, fought longest and fought hardest.” <