SOVIET BLUNDERS IN EXPECTING A WESTERN COLLAPSE

Grey River Argus, 6 October 1949, Page 5

SOVIET BLUNDERS IN EXPECTING A WESTERN COLLAPSE

Ernest Bevan On Moscow Autocrats (Rec. 9 0). OTTAWA, October 4. Russis’s assumption -that the West’s economy must inevitably collapse would eventually be her own undoing, said Rt. Hon. Ernest Bevin, British Foreign Secretary, in a speech here to-day. He added: “This assumption argues the West never learns anything. I do not think that we are going to have slumps inevitably arising. The Western Powers are determined that they shall not be ruined by any economic collapse. There was a little currency disturbance recently, but it might have been avoided if we had realised, earlier, what it was.

“As countries learn to cope with blind economic forces, they, also, will learn how to avoid them. We are not going to rely on th e creation of unemployment and of misery in order to adjust our economic system in a crisis. Our basis shall be to work—not to starve —our way out of a crisis”.

Mr Bevin said that, in Britain, there had been a broad acceptance of the principle that, when the time came for such adjustments, the burden must fall on everyone, and not fall merely on a section of the people. Such a feeling must be accepted by th e world. Dealing with other topics, Mr Bevin said that it was too early to talk about a Pacific Pact with commitments equal to those in the Atlantic Pact.

He said that Yugoslavia was the example of a warning of Russian autarchy. The question was not whether Marshal Tito was a Communist, but whether Moscow was Communist, and whether Marshal Tito would bow to Russian orders. That was th e issue, and the challenge. The West would never bow to such an attitude.