The Press WEDNESDAY, JUNE 29, 1966. To Russia With Amity

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31098, 29 June 1966, Page 16

The Press WEDNESDAY, JUNE 29, 1966. To Russia With Amity

In 1807 Napoleon met Alexander 1 of Russia on a raft in the Nieman river and signed the Peace of Tilsit, under which Napoleon was recognised as Emperor of Western Europe and Alexander was given a free hand in the Near East. There is a temptation to look on President de Gaulle’s present visit to Russia as a repetition of history. Will he, as part of his grand design, seek a resumption of the French-Soviet mutual assistance treaty which he signed in 1945 and which the Russians abrogated at the height of the cold war? If so, will this be the first step in a combined campaign to get the United States out of Europe, to keep Britain on its side of the Channel and, at the same time, to keep Germany fenced in? The outcome of the President’s visit is expected, initially at least, to be much more modest. There will be the now familiar agreement to foster closer trade and cultural relations. There will be a statement of intent to co-operate in science and technology; and there may also be a firm agreement to co-operate in space research. This in itself could have marked political repercussions, including the disintegration of the European Launcher Development Organisation and the frustration of American plans to sell facilities for communications satellites in both parts of Europe. These achievements, however, will be but the visible part of the French iceberg. President de Gaulle’s intention in disengaging from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and in cultivating closer relations with Russia is to rebuild, as he sees it, the broken unity of Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals. His dispute with the United States (over N.A.T.0.) and with Britain (over the Common Market), as well as his acceptance of the Oder-Neisse line and his opposition to nuclear arms for Germany, appear to place him on Russia’s side. But the Europe France wants is not one the Russians would readily accept The Atlantic-to-the-Urals concept appears to divide Russia; and Moscow could not but fear that a military vacuum created in Europe by the departure of American troops would soon be filled by Germans. In any event, Germany would not be interested in asking the Americans to go unless France could extract from Russia a major concession of German reunification. Germany, it is clear, remains the stumbling-block to a real detente in Europe and it is unlikely that new ideas to solve this problem will emerge from the Moscow talks.

But President de Gaulle holds another key to a rapprochement with the Communist world. France has experience of both war and peace in Vietnam. It stands between Moscow and Peking on one side and Washington and London on the other. President de Gaulle would relish the role of arbiter in a dispute that has frozen East-West diplomatic exchanges. In the preliminarv round of talks he has sought Soviet support for calling a Vietnam peace conference when he thinks the time is ripe; and on his return to Moscow from his tour of Russia he will press the initiative he has taken. On both European security and Vietnam there is common ground between the French leader and his hosts. Even if there is no positive outcome, the Moscow meetings will, as “ The “ Times ” says, “ take their place in the much wider “ adjustments that are working themselves out “between Russia and the West. Such a process is “ inevitable as the cold war recedes and each side is " slowly changing its way of life ”, Towards Understanding Alcoholism The Government’s bill to revise and improve the present outdated legislation on the treatment of alcoholism as a disease, controversial as it is, can count on a sympathetic reception from the public—thanks largely to the work of various organisations in endeavouring to broaden public understanding of what is unquestionably a major public health problem. While it is not possible to do more than estimate the number of alcoholics in New Zealand, authoritative quarters accept 25,000 as a minimum figure, with the rate of chronic addiction increasing rather than diminishing. An estimate of this kind makes, however, no more than a starting-point in any examination of the ramifications of the disease. For example, if it be accepted that there are at least 25,000 alcoholics in the Dominion, it may reasonably be assumed that 10 times that number of pedple are directly affected—wives, husbands, parents, children, employers, and so on. Purely on the economic side, the reckoning is that alcoholism costs New Zealand industry not less than £1 million a year. The National Society on Alcoholism, by organising publicly-attended study courses throughout the country and by seeking to stimulate public interest and discussion by other means, is doing a work of vital importance in the educational field. The society takes no stand on the question whether people should drink or not; and, although not concerned with treatment—as is, for example, Alcoholics Anonymous —it keeps itself closely informed on all developments in that field, to the end that its own pronouncements may be reliably informative. A series of articles prepared by the society should claim the interest of our readers: the articles attempt to answer questions that are frequently asked but often, perhaps, answered inadequately. During a long period of service the members of the society have made considerable progress towards the attainment of their objective—“to remove from the public mind the “stigma of alcoholism”. But much remains to be done, in capturing a wider public interest and focusing it on the need to recognise alcoholism for what it is—an insidious promoter of human suffering and unhappiness and, in the national sense, a cause of economic loss on an alarming scale. There should be general agreement that alcoholism raises a public health issue too important to be discussed on any basis other than that of authoritative understanding.