Children of Twenty-six Nations Confer at Lake Success

Grey River Argus, 29 March 1948, Page 2

Children of Twenty-six Nations Confer at Lake Success

LAKE SUCCESS, March 21. A seventeen-year-old youth . named Peter Ewing looks up from his chair in the centre of the horseshoe table of the Economic and Social Council chambers. “The boy from France,” he said. At the far end of the table, 13-year-old John Combemale leaned forward, “It’s all very .well to talk about education,” he said, “but we must feed the children before we may educate them. If we do not. feed them, they will grow up in sickness and endanger - the world.” “Yes”, a 15-year-old girl cut in, forgetting the formality of addressing the chair. “If these children go hunthe chance for peace is small.” The ‘‘Report to the Children” meeting, held at Lake Success, United States, by the United Nations Appeal for Children, was well under way. Children of 26 countries, ranging: in age from 10 to 18, had taken their places at the conference table and ibeeh welcomed by SecretaryGeneral Trygve Lie. The Conference was formally opened at 10.30 a.m. by Ambassador’ Sant Cruz Hernan, of Chile, first Vice-President of the Economic and Social Council. Messages were read to the young members of the meeting: messages of encouragement signed by men ana women whose names have international significance; Jan Sibelius, Aldous Huxley, Gilbert Murray, Aurora Quezon, Dr. W. W, Yen and Herbert Evatt were some of them. From New Zealand, Canada, Uruguay, from Turkey, Hungary. South Africa and Sweden, the children of the world spoke Io the children assembled at Lake Success. A nine-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy spoke from Prague. In answer to a question of what they would do If children from other countries came to' see them, they said they would share all they had with them, and would ask them not to believe any ill that was said about them by anybody else. They, for their part, would believe in the goodness of children from other countries, a,nd would try never to accept any ill which was said about children of other nations. To the children at Lake Success, the children in Czechoslovakia said simply, “We shall never fight each other.”

But then the listening was over. It was time for the children around the large table to speak. Often repeating themselves in their excitement, and sometimes stumbling over words, they did speak. The exchanged ideas in ‘the afternoon, then formulated what they wanted to say into a uniamimous resolution.

The children at the conference table, and more than 400 children who jammed the audience, listened intentlv while Chester Bowles, chairman of the international Advisory Committee for UNAC gave a report on the conditions of children the world over and the progress of the Appeal. They heard Mr Bowles condemn Ills own generation with words such as “You didn’t make the war. We made the war. Your fathers were taken from your homes. You didn’t send them. \Ve sent them. The teen-age audience, which normally would have spent Saturday at a ball park or in a movie house, remained ‘silent, their attention fixed on the agular, soft-spoken man who continued. “Now—incredibly, criminally—there is talk of new wars! We grown-ups, we who are supposed to leach and guide you young people, are spending to-day on a few destroyers, more than it would cost to inoculate every infant in the world against tuberculosis. We have given years of our lives—and years of your yong lives —to these pursuits. Now it is up to us to give one day for the children.” When Mr Bowles had finished speaking he signalled to an engineer in a radio booth above the audience. In a moment the recorded voices of children filled the chambers. A nine-year-old boy from the Philippines told of the war as he had known it. Although he was only three when the war began, he said he could remember that he was always hungry. He told his story with quiet dignity, then suddenly he sobbed, “I hate war.” “Where one child suffers, there is a duty to be done,” said the recorded voice of a 15-year-old Belgian girl.