‘HAVE-NOT’ PEOPLES TO BE HELPED BY AMERICAN PLAN

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23092, 3 November 1949, Page 5

‘HAVE-NOT’ PEOPLES TO BE HELPED BY AMERICAN PLAN

_ NEW YORK, Nov. 1. Hundreds of millions of people in the under-developed areas of the world were “in a ferment,” said the Secretary of State, Mr. Dean Acheson, in appealing for support of President Truman’s peace and freedom programme, which provides for the development of those areas.

Mr. Acheson, who was addressing the annual convention of the Congress of Industrial Organisations at Cleveland, said the President’s programme, by making available techniques developed in industrialised countries, would enable the people of the under-developed countries to "take a short cut to progress that will enable them to by-pass centuries of laborious effort."

■Mr. Acheson added: “Hundreds of millions of people inhabitating large areas with great natural resources are impatient to close the gap between their status as ‘have-nots’ and the status of haves.’• These people are no longer satisfied with promises of a better life. They want it now. . The United States was wholeheartedly m sympathy with the movement for better living conditions and greater freedom. It welcomed social changes which, in fact, transferred broad liberties and responsibilities to the people. The Communists were promising food and material comforts to hungry and distressed people “if only they will accept slavery to the State in return.” Democracy must prove its case, not only among those who already knew democracy but among the vastly greater number who had never experienced it.