Death of a World Citizen

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 824, 13 May 1955, Page 18

Death of a World Citizen

| Extracts from recent commentaries on the international news, broadcast from the main National Stations of the NZBS

HIS week has seen the death of a renowned world citizen, Albert Einstein, a man whose name is surely destined to last as long as our Western civilisation. Most of us knew the name of Einstein without understanding in the least what his Theory of Relativity meant. Very few people, of course, can know what it means. Yet the strange thing is that Einstein, as a name, was universally known. I’m not competent to discuss the significance of his work as a physicist. You can put me among those who don’t grasp the Theory of Relativity. I’m just among the majority who may be able to recall one or two of the prevalent rhymes about him. You know the sort of thing: There was a young lady named Bright, Who travelled much faster than light, She started one day, In a relative way, And returned on the preceding night. The Theory of Relativity has added a dimension to human knowledge. It has, so I’ve read and been told, modified Newton’s Theory of Gravity. Mind you, I’m speaking without the book; I just don’t know from experience. But I am aware-indeed, we ‘must all be aware-of another achievement of Albert Ejinstein’s. It was the creation of a simple enough looking formula: E equals MC squared. Spelled out, that means: Energy equals mass multipuied by the square of the velocity of light. The velocity of light, in round figures, is 186,000 miles a second. When that figure is multiplied by itself you get a pretty big answer. This formula, in its ultimate results, may be the greatest ever devised by a human mind. By showing how atomic energy could be released, it made the atom bomb possible. Einstein himself did not claim credit for what has happened following deeper and more general] scientific consideration of his tremendous formula. He has said: do not consider myself the father of the release of atomic energy. My part in ‘it was quite indirect. I did not, in fact, foresee that it would be released in my time. I believed only that release was theoretically possible. It became practical through the accidental discovery of chain reactions, and this was not something I could have pre: dicted." After those atomic bombs had been dropped on Japan in August, 1945, Einstein noted, with horror, what his formula had made practicable. From that time on, the man who had made the release of atomic energy possible devoted his days to campaigning for a World Government +-a government of vail nations invested with authority to "prevent war and especially control the use of atomic weapons, That formula has not been accepted as readily as the one that released atomic energy. Let’s make what we like of a declaration made by Einstein last year. He said then that if he had his time over again he would choose to be a plumber rather than a scientist. If we keep in mind the possible consequences of his intellectual achievements-and we can hardly avoid doing that-we must salute Albert Einstein as one of the historically great

figures of this century. It is not his fault that his formula has clouded the

skies for mankind.

IAN

DONNELLY

April 23, 1955.

THE AUSTRIAN TREATY

NE of the most intriguing events of the week has been the visit of the Austrian Chancellor and his colleagues to Moscow. .. The Austrians have been waiting nearly 10 years for such a gesture, and during that time Austria has been an occupied country much on the German model and denied an honourable peace settlement. Time after time

for nine years the Big Four have tried to get a peace treaty

for Austria, and time after time Russia has placed some obstacle in the way, notwithstanding the Moscow Declaration of 1943, which said that one of, the aims of the peace then still to be won was to be the re-establishment of a free and independent Austria. At one stage it was Soviet concern for Yugoslav claims to a part of Austrian territory that held.things up. Then it was Austrian reparations to Russia. Later the Trieste problem was advanced as an objection. Still later the Big Three... agreed to sign Russia’s own revised text of the proposed treaty, but Russia procrastinated again with the excuse that the conclusion of a treaty with Germany must precede the one with Austria. . . Why the ‘sudden change of heart on the part of Russia? Why this mood of almost deferential conciliation? I can only make a guess. Isn’t there a close relation between her change of front and the ‘vittual completion of the Paris Agreements, which will give Western Germany full sovereignty, allow her to rearm under safeguards and bring her into the membership of Nato? For long enough Russia did her best to stop these things from happening. Now the Paris treaties are almost an accomplished fact, Russia accepts diplomatic defeat, though she doesn’t admit it, and with Muscovite logic, proceeds to cut her losses in one sphere and hopes to derive acvantage by branching out in another. .. But I feel she may have another and more positive reason. You see, there could have been an Austrian treaty long ago-of a kind-if Britain, the United States and France had withdrawn their troops. and left Russian troops there, or not far away across the border. But the Western Powers weren’t as gullible as that, for they knew what had happened in Hungary , and remembered Czechoslovakia. That would have been too easy a way of Russia either dominating Austria or embracing her as a Com- ~ munist satellite. Guarantees against this sort of thing happening have still to be found in the Four Power negotiations. For Russia, one incentive to settlement will be the prospect of seeing the occupation troops of the West depart from close to the edge of the Iron

Curtain.

RUSSELL

PALMER

April 16, 1955.