PEACE IS INDIVISIBLE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 80, 27 April 1945, Page 4

PEACE IS INDIVISIBLE

SIMPLE words highly charged with meaning were used by President Truman in giving the San Francisco conference its key note. To a gathering widely representative of races and creeds he did not propound abstruse philosophies but underlined the fundamental thesis that, ih our world, peace is indivisible; that, if we do not want to die together, we must learn to live together; and that the reign of justice must be espoused by mankind rather than resort to the grim arbitrament of war, which, of itself, settles nothing. Such a definition of purpose is by no means new. San Francisco is concerned/With translating this faith into actuality. It is the same sentiment that inspired the search for the League of Nations as an instrument of security, but sincere professions of intention did not then avail and now we are trying to be less theoretical and more severely practical. San Francisco does not need any complicated technicalities to define its aims. How to obtain a common basis of outlook through discussion instead of force is the practical problem to which the peace-loving nations are now addressing themselves. They are not being asked to sink their individualities but to co-oper-ate in building a world structure which really will obey the dictum that peace is indivisible and see that others obey it. That is the experience which is strange and difficult because •it is new, notwithstanding that the old League prepared some of the ground. What we are really doing is trying to carry the collaboration of war over into the peace.