CHALLENGE TO THE WEST CALLS FOR UNITY

Grey River Argus, 18 June 1949, Page 5

CHALLENGE TO THE WEST CALLS FOR UNITY

“Or Be Picked Off One By One”

(Rec 10.10) . LONDON, June 17. “ All of the forces of the Westpolitical, military, and economic-' must be combined to save Western civilisation and to make the whole world a decent and a safe place to live in,” said Mr Thomas Finletter. who is the Marshall Plan administrator in Britain. He was speaking at the Anglo-American Pilgrims' Society Dinner. He added that the challenge to Western civilisation could not' be handled by any one nation alone. The wisdom and the character of the West, and, in particular, of Britain and the United States, were needed to surmount that crallenge. The Marshall Plan, he said, was an immediate and a most important contribution of the West to the economic side of a grand policy which the West must adopt. The first move in this policy must be a large measure of unification of th? West in all fields. “If we all remain separate, we will be picked off, one by one, and rather soon at that.”

Mr Finletter said that useless and irritating barriers to the free movement of goods, of vehicles, and of currency and of persons should be done away with immediately. He declared: —

‘‘The Marshall Plan, working in concert with the Atlantic Pact and with the military programme of the major countries on both sides, of the Atlantic, is creating a solid Atlantic community, which, we must believe will work out the survival, of society in this dreadfully dangerous age.” U.S. Navy Squadron At Portsmouth (N.Z.P.A.—REUTER CABLE)

(Rec. 10.40). LONDON, June 17. Ten ships, comprising a United States Navy training squadron, have arrived at Portsmouth on an eightday visit. The flagship of the squadron is the battleship Missouri, on which the Japanese surrender was signed at Tokio in 1945.

Russia Stops Exports Of Strategic Metals WASHINGTON, June 15. The U.S. Census Bureau has disclosed that in April the export from Russia to the- United States of manganese and chrome ores was halted. International trade experts in the Department of Commerce said that this was the culmination of a timid of recent months, during wh.ch

Russian shipments of these two steel hardening metals had been dropping off sharply. Since the war Russia has been one of America’s major sources .R manganese and chrome, which arc classified as strategic materials in short supply here. The quarter said that the Russian action was a direct result of the world political situation and was no> related to Russian production or the demand of the Ameri'■'.n market. They added that the situation did not threaten steel shortages in the United States, because it.ee! manufacturers had comparatively large stocks and American imports from other sources had been increasing great: recently.