YEAR OF DECISION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27385, 10 May 1950, Page 7

YEAR OF DECISION

International Impasse MR LIE CALLS FOR BOLD ACTION N ZPA—Reuter—Copyright GENEVA, May 8. The Secretary-general of the United Nations, Mr Trygve Lie, now in Switzerland on his way to Moscow, declared here today that 1950 was the year of decision for the world. He told the opening session of the third World Health Assembly: “We cannot meet this challenge successfully at the snail’s pace of today. We cannot meet it by halfway measures. We cannot postpone it until a more convenient time. The challenge is here and now. The time has come to end the cold war. “It must be admitted that the immediate prospects do not seem encouraging,” Mr Lie said. “Nevertheless, we should not delay our search for a way out of the present impasse Undoubtedly it will take time and patience and much exploration to bring about a reduction of the tensions and to set the world once more on the United Nations road to peace. “The supreme challenge is presented by that great majority of the population of the world more than I,6oo,ooo,ooo—whose poverty, hunger, and insecurity must be substantially remedied if they are not to result in new and disastrous upheavals. “ Most of these people live in the socalled under-developed areas of the world in Asia and Africa. They will no longer accept the grinding poverty that has been their fate for centuries.”

Mr Lie called for bold and creative action on a world-wide scale to bring about real improvements that would aim at doubling living standards within 20 years. The diarist of the London Daily Telegraph says that when Mr Lie goes to Moscow he will take with him a letter from Professor Einstein in which Professor Einstein expresses the view that an explosion of the hydrogen bomb may set up chain reactions which will have the most serious effect upon the world. Mr Lie, according to the paper, will show the letter to Mr Stalin.