“UNHELPFUL POSTSCRIPT”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26918, 2 November 1948, Page 5

“UNHELPFUL POSTSCRIPT”

MR CHURCHILL’S REFERENCE TO INDIA NEWSPAPER CRITICAL N.Z.P.A.— Reuter—Copyright Rec. 9 p.m. LONDON, Oct. 31. The influential. Sunday newspaper, the Observer, charged Mr Churchill with adding “a most unfortunate and unhelpful postscript to .the brilliantly successful work of the Commonwealth conference of Prime Ministers. “ His statement that India would have to be treated as a foreign country unless the link with the British Crown was preserved begs the momentous constitutional question on which the future of the Commonwealth may well depend,” says the paper, “and his insistence on keeping the nomenclature British Empire ’ for an association of nations which plainly no longer is either British or an empire is scarcely statesmanlike. “Is Mr Churchill really willing to throw away a chance of building an intimate partnership between the leading Power in Western Europe—Britain —and, the leading Power in Asia— India—for the sake of ‘ pride of race ’? Everybody can to-day see that in the controversy on Indian policy a year ago Mr Attlee was right and Mr Churchill was wrong. He should be great enough to admit his error and to change his mind.”