I do not believe any of the holy trinity who wrote this article had my advantage of an Anglican upbringing. They sneer at the very names of the Deans of Canterbury and Waikato. They do not understand that in the C of E there are many mansions—many more than in most churches. The two Deans are far from sharing a single mansion—for though personal friends, they diverge on such important points as transubstantiation and the efficacy of passive resistance. But where they do agree (and 19 other Christian clergymen—Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant—on the World Peace Council agree with them) is on the point that "The fires of hate are raging, and it behoves us all to rally to the only genuine peace movement, meeting across all frontiers, that there is in the world to-day." Dean Chandler's statement, published by the N.Z. Peace Council, April, 1951.)

"Whip them Along"

It is precisely here that these churchmen part company with our three local scribes.

They accuse the World Peace Council, or its "Communist sponsors," of attempting to compete with UN. How come the whole consummation of the Warsaw World Peace Congress last November was an "Address to the United Nations," expressing, to that body the views of the Congress on the best way to secure world peace? As Dean Chandler remarked (with suitable gestures) on the Wellington Town Hall platform on 17th April: "Our aim is not to supplant the United Nations, but to whip it along a bit."

The Dean's popularity throughout New Zealand is sufficient answer to the allegation that the World Peace movement has made little headway in this country. Truly, under 30,000 N.Z. signatures were obtained to the Stockholm Appeal: but the National Peace Congress in Auckland last month was a tremendous success—with 205 delegates representing 45,000 people. Bodies represented included many unions outside the Watersiders—Carpenters, Freezingworkers, Railway unions, the Post and Telegraph Association: Quakers, Christian Pacifist Society, and many individual clergymen of other denominations: the United Nations Association, the Pensioners' Association, and some LRC's (electorate councils of the Labour Party). I fear our defaming trio have heard but the beginning of the Peace Movement in New Zealand.

Red Herring?

The "Cominform" origin of the World Peace movement is a sadly flogged horse before the end of the first instalment of our friends' article. It will doubtless be bleeding on through the second instalment, too.

Connection between the 1947 Cominform meeting and the 1948 Wroclam Conference of Intellectuals for Peace (where Julian Huxley, Kingsley Martin, Lord Boyd Orr, Olaf Stapledon and Louis Golding took a hand among others) is tenuous if shadily existent, and quite unproven.

And even if the Communists did take such a big hand, is that merely to the eternal shame of the declared disciples of the Prince of Peace? It certainly is that, just as much as are the Pope's Mass for Mussolini's butchers off to Abyssinia, Cardinal Souhard's infamous relations with the Vichyites, and Cardinal Innitzer's obsequies to Hitler.

While our friends snort about only 17 out of the 138 members of the first World Peace Committee not being "Communists or fellow-travellers," they would do well to remember that Professor Joliot-Curie and the Abbe Boulier were risking their lives organising the French Resistance while our self-proclaiming "Christian" friends were selling their countries to the Nazis. In his report to the N.Z. Peace Council on the Warsaw Congress, Mr. Keith Matthews states that there are "very many fewer Communists than others" on the World Peace Council.)

And who would pit himself in stature against the "fellow-traveller" Chinese poet and scholar Kuo Mo-Jo? Or against "fellow-traveller" Mexican Socialist and elder statesman Lazaro Cadenas? Or against "fellow-traveller" Metropolitan Nikolai of the Russian Church?

The new western darling, Tito, gets more solicitude from our friends. (Is Archbishop Stepinac to be left to his fate?) The truth is that the World Peace Committee's severance of connection with the Yugoslav Peace Committee in 1949 followed that body's servile echoing of bellicose utterances by Tito himself. Members of the former Yugoslav Peace Committee still serve on the World Peace Council in exile. Similarly, the only Spaniards on the top level of the World Peace movement are living in exile—including a recently-escaped Roman Catholic priest whom Mr. Keith Matthews (of Wellington) met in Warsaw in November.

(Yugoslavia and Spain were the only countries on earth where the Stockholm Appeal was officially banned. In other places—West Germany, the south USA, and some of fascist Latin Americas for instance—practical police measures were taken against signatories and collectors.)

Living in Glass-Houses

I have not yet gathered quite why our three little friends have adopted such a blatant type of distortion as fathering statements of "Pravda," the Cominform Journal, and the Czech Minister of Education (out of context) onto the World Peace Congress. If it is intended to prove that the World Peace Congress and the Cominform are in effect the same thing, then it is an elementary breach of logical argument known popularly as "begging the question." Try a new one, boys.

Nothing, however, could be more amusing to anyone with a sense of humour than to read Messrs. McIntyre, Cook and Hurley in this article accusing someone else of "repetition . . . smearing . . . abuse . . . emotive prose . . . and lrrele-vancles." Their own article contains nothing uncovered by one or other of these terms.

The stuff they hang out to support these accusations is funnier yet. "Pravda" is quoted as being "similar" to the language used by the World Peace movement I advise our friends to read the "Address to the United Nations," a copy of which Dean Chandler carries about in his pocket.

Fear of "emotive prase" is common with immature minds bemused by Stage I English. There are some things that should affect the emotions of anyone except a cold-blooded killer. The appeal of the Korean women (thrown a gratuitous sneer by our friends) is one such thing.

Believe it or not, Messrs. McIntyre. Cook and Hurley—while you are indulging in the luxuries of eating and sleeping in peace, and going about your remote, insignificant, comfortable, complacent day's work—people in Korea are being maimed and slaughtered, and their land is being turned into a desert.

How Else?

That is the one big truth behind the World Peace Congress's demand for peace, and behind their demand for freedom for subject nations. Did our friends read the papers on 29/11/49 and see that "20 to 40" Nigerian coalminers had been shot down by the police in Lagos because they were asking for 5/10 a day? And did they read the papers on 19/5/51 and see how in Nairobi police squads used batons to control strikers . . . Armoured cars were used"? Do they know this sort of thing has been going on for years, and still goes on? Do they know that colonial subjection has always meant violence and war? And are they ashamed of a Christianity that has borne all this on its conscience without raising an effective finger?

World churchmen are beginning to wake up now, even those who have not officially associated themselves with the Peace movement. The statement of the Cardinals and Archbishops of France on 19th June last year, condemning the A-bomb and other means of mass destruction, acknowledges the goading effect of the Stockholm Appeal.

But our three friends remain ungoaded. They are content with a negative approach—beyond the bald statement that they "don't want war." They don't want war, and yet they are not prepared to join in with the Communists and discuss their differences with a view to reaching understanding.

Well, if they don't want war, and they don't want the only effective mass organisation for peace, then what the hell do they want?

C. V. Bollinger.