“WORLD PEACE CONGRESS”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27041, 28 March 1949, Page 5

“WORLD PEACE CONGRESS”

Speaker Tilts at Pro-Communist Influence

New Zealand Press Association—Copyright Rec. 11 p.m. NEW YORK, Mar. 26. After refusing one invitation to address the “ World Peace Congress ” sponsored by the American National Council of Arts, Sciences, and Professions, which opened in New York to-day, Mr Norman Cousins, editor of the Saturday Review of Literature, changed his mind and jolted the conference by tilting at the pro-Communist influence present. Hoots, hisses, and jeers interrupted his speech six times, and the next speaker rebuked him for not saving criticism of his dinner hosts until he got home.

Outside the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, where the meeting is being held, 2000 anti-Communists shouted: “We don’t want Communists here. Go back to Russia.” There was no violence except one brief fist fight, which was quickly stopped by the police. Mr Cousins, in his speech, said the group supporting the conference owed its primary allegiance and duty not to America, but to an outside Government. “Americans want peace. . They will work for peace, they will sacrifice for peace, but they do not want peace at any price.” He added that the atmosphere of tension, hostility, and near violence surrounding the conference was the inevitable reaction to the auspices under which the conference was being held. The demonstrators outside were not sneaking out against peace, but “against the small political group in this country which failed to live up to the rules of the game in democracy.” Dr William Stapledon, the philosopher. who was the only British delegate given a visa, referred in his speech to the conference to the “ great war leader” now in the United States who “ does not know much about what the British people are really thinking and feeling.” The' audience hissed at the obvious reference to Mr Winston Churchill. Dr Stapledon added that if a third world war came Britain would not be " whole-heartedly against Russia as she was against Germany.” The average British worker, he said, after a decade’s admiration of the new Russia, was not going to be suddenly turned against Russia. Neither the spate of anti-Russian propaganda in the commercial press nor the reluctant realisation that the Russian attitude was different from the Western attitude, nor the stupid unfriendly behaviour of the Russian Government could quickly abplish that vast affection and admiration. Dr- Harlow Shapley, a Harvard University professor and the confer-

ence chairman, denied that it was Communist-controlled. He. said Russia and the United States were both at fault in conducting a “ cold war.” No thoughtful leader believed to-day that anyone could win a third world war. Immigration authorities ordered back to Canada two Canadians who attended the “world peace conference ” dinner. They are John Goss, identified as an actor, and Mrs Barker Farley, described as a member of the Cultural Committee of the Canadian Labour Progressive (Communist) Party. Mrs Farley’s husband, described as vice-president of the Canadian Council of American-Soviet Friendship, was also seized, but the authorities decided to allow him to remain because he was visiting as the guest of a professor at Columbia University. The chief of the Immigration Department in New *ork, Mr C. Pennington. said Mrs Farley and Goss were “ given the privilege of departing from the United States in lieu of facing charges.” Opposition Meeting Opponents of the conference denounced Russia at a rally held at Freedom House. The keynote of the opposition was struck by Dr Bryn Hovde, President of the New School for Research. He said Nazi Germany had crushed intellectual freedom as a prelude to the Second World War. “To-day, the menace is doubly great from. the Communist Party, which wherever it seizes control abolishes all freedom —intellectual, scientific, artistic and political—first in its own members, and then for everyone.”