“WORLD PEACE CONFERENCE” IN NEW YORK ENDS

Wanganui Chronicle, 29 March 1949, Page 5

“WORLD PEACE CONFERENCE” IN NEW YORK ENDS

Pickets And Audience Yell At Each Other, But No Violence Done NEW YORK, March 27 (Recd. 7.40 pm).—A capacity crowd of 18,000 ran the gauntlet of shouting, booing pickets outside Maidson Square Garden night in an uproarious finale to the Cultural and Scientific “World Peace Conference. - ’ Hundreds of police guarded the arena as 2000 representatives of Catholic, Jewish and War Veterans’ groups demonstrated in the street. Pickets and audience yelled at each other and waved lists, but there was no violence. The rally opened dramatically with the voice of a radio operator trying \ainly to reach London, Rome, Mexico City and other capitals from which would-be delegates were barred by the State Department. The audience applauded, cheered and hooted in appropriate places as speaker after speaker laid down the principle that world-wide co-operation was the only key to universal peace. Mention ot Churchill, Truman, the North Atlantic Pact and the State Department brought hisses and boos. Alexander Fadeyev won the loudest applause with the assertion that Russia did not want to fight and held out the hand of peace to the United States. Dmitri Shostakovich, Russian composer, said today that “new aspirants to world domination’” were feverishly arming themselves for mass destructions of peoples. “With special ardour they are perfecting new kinds of weapons,” he toid the Fine Arts Panel of the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace. “They build military bases thousands of miles from their frontiers. They trample upon international obligations and treaties designed to bring peace. They reject proposals for concluding pacts of peace, and they systematically and with premeditation, wage campaigns of lies and slander in order to prepare public opinion for transition from a so-called cold war to outright aggression.” Shostakovich did not identify the “new aspirants to world domination.” A speech by Dr. Frederick Schuman, professor of political science at Williams College, suggesting that Russia was as much to blaime as the United States for any drift toward war, brought a denial from Alexander Fadeyev, nead of the Russian delegation. Fadeyev said: “There are no elements in our country which desire war against the United States or any other country.” Fadeyevs remarks received a wildly enthusiastic response from 2500 at the conference. The session passed two resolutions. The first called for strengthening United Nations as the best hope for peace and for co-operation by United Nations with other peace movements throughout the world. The second, which denounced race discrimination, anti-Semitism and the trial of political groups, called for cultural freedom.