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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 17, No. 2. March 11, 1953

The Two Bloc

The Two Bloc

When we speak of the co-existence of two economic systems I do not believe we mean the co-existence of two blocs, for a co-existence is not a juxtaposition. A Juxtaposition of two-blocks maintains distrust and ends by leading from cold war to hot war. The African and Asian delegates will tell us how they see the task of the peoples of their continents in the establishment of peace. As a European guest I shall personally say what I should like to see for Western Europe. It would be no use denying that the economy of Western Europe becomes dally more dependent on the United States. On the other hand, in most of the democracies, the proletariat is turning hopefully towards Soviet Russia and the eastern democracies. The result of these two tendencies today is a more or less violent conflict between the masses and certain categories of leader. But if we persevere, these very characteristics might tomorrow, on the contrary, give to the countries of the West the role of mediators. I don't mean by that that they should come in as mediators in diplomatic discussions—we are not here to talk about diplomats—but I mean that they should be the terrain where the currents coming from the capitalist American and from the Socialist U.S.S.R. would meet and intermingle. I say that a renewal or an intensification of the currents of commerce between the eastern democracies and those of Western Europe would not only be in accord with concrete reality, but would help to make of Europe (Including a revived Germany and Austria) one of the Indispensable hinges, between the great Powers.

Now this would be possible on two conditions. The first is that the Western European States should be able to concert their efforts in an examination of the means by which they can progressively recover their economic Independence and loosen the bonds of this Atlantic Pact which, ignoring their ambiguous situation and their abundant internal contradictions, just simply turns them into United States soldiers and forces them to join a bloc when this is precisely what they do not want and cannot do. They "could then, to the extent that they had regained their independence, re-establish friendly relations and solidarity with the Eastern democracies and put back some sense into treaties like the Franco-Soviet pact.

So it seems to me that the aim of this congress should be to bring to the notice of the various governments, by our final resolution here and by our daily activities at home, the concrete wishes of the peoples; to demand that these powers which have assumed responsibility for the world whether we like it or not should defer to the will of the peoples; to obtain a complete reorientation of International negotiations. Can we say that we are approaching these objectives? No, far from that, for it's a long-term Job, one that we have not really yet begun. But begin we shall, and we shall go through to the final objective.

Many of us have come to this congress as delegates of divers organisations or with the mandate of a political party, others with no mandate whatever. But all of us, all those who give their approval to the final resolution, will consider themselves on their return as bearing the man-dale of the congress. The congress should be our conscious collective will, and in the name of this will upon our return to our many countries we shall find ourselves with new obligations to fulfill and new tasks to perform. It is to be hoped that this year's Congress will at last bring a positive solution which the governments will take account of. That is my ardent hope, but we should not hide ourselves the fact that we are still a minority in our countries. I know personally many very honest people who should be here alongside us, but who are not. Why is this? From pessimism, from resignation, and because they have been made to feel that the Congress is a manoeuvre. In short, they have not put their trust in it and as I have said, it is mistrust that leads to war.

The geographical divisions of which Germany is today in danger of dying is with us an invisible social division, but it's the same thing, a sort of impenetrable vacuum separating one half of the nation from the other. This abstract separation causes us to treat our cousin or our neighbour not as a cousin or as a neighbour, but as an enemy cut off from us by a line of fire. This distance has been created without trenches and cannons, but there is nonetheless a no man's land dividing the people of France. And this no man's land, the result of three years of cold war, is each day helping to make our countries factors for war instead of the factors for peace that they should be. For this reason, one of the essential aims of our Congress should be and shall be to cause these men of goodwill bitterly to regret not having come to Vienna. They "must say among themselves, "We wanted peace, yet when a group of sincere men came together to try to make peace we were not there." When these regrets shall have melted away a Utile of their mistrust and their fear, this no man's land, or in other words anti-Communism, shall have been rolled back a little further, and we [unclear: shall] be able to say that in the cours of our work for peace on an International scale we have helped to bring reconciliation at home.

Today we are still a minority, but at the next Congress we shall perhaps be the representatives of the majority in our country.