Take the Initiative

The only really constructive proposals put forward in the recent foreign affairs debate in Parliament were made by Mr. Warren Freer, who recommended that New Zealand should (even after being party to Britain's recent tests) take the initiative in a non-nuclear-nation move to break the nuclear deadlock and effect a ban on H-weapons; and that we should limit our defence measures to New Zealand (the place we are after all, meant to be defending) and use the money we are spending on sending forces to Asia on economic assistance.

But Mr. Holland was too busy explaining the "necessity" for Britain's bomb tests, and Mr. Macdonald was too full of the need for our "front line" to be in Malaya, and Mr. Eyre was too ecstatic about the rightness of what Sir Anthony did in Egypt, and Mr. Gotz was too fascinated proving with his Geiger counter that his wrist watch was more dangerous than an H-bomb, and all the fatuous rest of them were too narrow of vision and small of mind to heed the voice of sanity.