WAR OR PEACE?

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26473, 29 May 1947, Page 4

WAR OR PEACE?

Sir, —From recent cable news reported in your paper, it is obvious that America has decided there is to be another war. This fact in itself is disturbing beyond measure, proving, as it docs, that the political leaders of America can either learn nothing from experience or that, indifferent to human agony, they are determined to make a bid for world power. Recently President Truman said: “We are the giant of the economic world. Whether we like it or not, the future pattern of economic relations depends on us. We can lead the nations into economic peace or we can plunge them into economic war.” Forgetting for the time the bombast of these words (true as they are), there is a worse feature in them than that, i It js the fact that America has not decided on economic peace., If peace were her objective she would not have given to the world, as she did last week, particulars of her research into radioactive clouds and bacteriological war. I am referring to cable news given at fair length in your issues of the 19th and 20th inst., respectively. Mr Glenn Martin says: “ Such clouds, each of them perhaps a mile square, could be laid in a series. They would not kill suddenly, but would spread lingering death and corrosion over great areas.” When responsible men speak like this and can calmly think on hellish devices that would spread lingering death it is surely time for the citizens of their own and other countries to take notice, for it is quite unsafe for their lives to be conditioned by men like these. One wonders, also, what is the purpose behind the informative cablegram regarding the effectiveness or otherwise of disease germs which are listed in disgusting detail. Unless decent, sane people arouse themselves and watch with painstaking scrutiny every move of the warmongers the bell for the next war will ring before they know they arc, •and personally, I can see no other conclusion to the next war than the extinction of civilisation—such as it is. The situation, however, could be quite different. There is still time to reconstruct the world in a useful pattern. It is for the common people to tell their representatives what they desire, and not for the representatives to assume leadership and then turn round to the people and say, “ We vvill decide whether you live or die.” —I am, etc., May 24. Humanity.