FIRM FOUNDATION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 November 1943, Page 3

FIRM FOUNDATION

FOR WAR AND POST=WAR COLLABORATION LAID AT THE MOSCOW CONFERENCE. MR. CORDELL HULL’S ADDRESS TO CONGRESS. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, November 19. “Victory would have been impossible if this country and Britain, the Soviet Union, China and other victims of aggression had not each risen as a unit, in the defence of liberty and independence,” Mr Cordell Hull, •United Slates Secretary of State, declared when he addressed Congress on the results of the Moscow declaration. "Victory would have been equally impossible if all these nations had not come together in a brotherhood of selfpreservation.”

The convocation ,of the conference, said Mr Hull, was the result of “the profound conviction on the part of Messrs. Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin that at this stage of the war frank and friendly exchanges of views between the responsible representatives of their Governments on problems of post-war as well as war collaboration were matters of great urgency.” He had gone to Moscow to discuss some of the basic problems of internatonal relations in light of the principles to which the United States, under the leadership of Mr Roosevelt, had given widespread addherence. He had never attended a conference where there was greater determination on the part of all participants to move forward in a spirit of mutual understanding and confidence, and he emphasised, too, that, while important agreements were reached, there were no secret agreements and none was suggested. General security would be the found-ation-stone on which the future international organisation decided upon at Moscow would be constructed. The declaration by the Soviet Union, Britain, the United States and China was designed to enable all peace-loving countries, large or small, to live in peace and security, to preserve the liberties and rights of civilised existence, and enjoy expanded opportunities and . facilities for economic, social and spiritual progress. Each had in the past relied in varying degrees upon the politics of detachment and alooftness. The four Governments at Moscow had pledged themselves to carry forward to the fullest development a broad, progressive programme of international co-opera-tion.

This action was of world-wide importance. As the provisions of the declaration were carried into effect, there would no longer be a need for spheres of influence, alliances, a balance of power or any other of the special arrangements .through which, in the unhappy past, nations strove to safeguard their security or promote their interests.