‘World Threat Of Famine’

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31108, 11 July 1966, Page 2

‘World Threat Of Famine’

Mrs Margaret Holmes, of Sydney, is a woman dedicated to the cause of peace. She believes that the biggest threat to the world is famine, not Communism.

The secretary of the Australian section of the Women’s League for Peace and Freedom and a patron of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation of Australia and New Zealand, Mrs Holmes is on a lecture tour of New Zealand. Before leaving Christchurch yesterday, Mrs Holmes who is a Christian pacifist—"l am not a Communist, I disagree with many of Communism’s ideas and practices said it was time that resources at present used for destruction should be channelled into constructive efforts for peace, the development Of food and water resources and population control. “Experts have told us that famine will be widespread within 20 years. We are not doing enough to avoid it,” she said. She thinks it is ridiculous that women in Australia and New Zealand have had the vote for so long, yet have so few members elected to Parliament. There are a few in the Australian Senate, but none in the House of Representatives. Mrs Holmes became interested in working for peace when she was a student.

“I was brought up in an ordinary middle-class home where the Empire was revered and I was taught we had a great civilising mission and that Britain was a perfect country,” she said. A study of the causes of the First World War opened her eyes to the ways of big powers. At the same time she became interested in the Student Christian Movement and met some Quakers. She be-

came convinced that if one was a Christian one should also be a pacifist Mrs Holmes believes in passive resistance to aggression.