UN INTERVENTIONS
Sir,- Replying to M. N. Roe’s thoughtful comment on my letter, the question is not which nations, because of what has happened in the past, have most right to fear the others. It is which nation or bloc of nations is the present obstacle to universal total disarmament. I declare all armed nations to be alike, in these days, guilty of criminal conspiracy against the human race. Before World War II Russia was the advocate of universal total disarmament. During the last decade, Russia and her
allies have been most obstinate opponents of schemes aiming at effective disarmament involving the essential sa‘eguards of international inspection, acceptable to others. Violence was a basic element of Marxist-Lenin doctrine, and it is still a canon of Russian policy, witness Hungary and the threats to obliterate by nuclear means nations ‘of Whose policies Russia disapproves. Remove from the Russian people the terror of the secret police, dread of banishment to slave camps and of sudden and deadly disappearance, and they would wholeheartedly support demands for universal total disarmament. The Kremlin men have reason to fear that if the Russian people learned that Russia is not the human paradise they are taught to think it, it would be the end of the Kremlin men. For instance, in Russia the highest paid workers get monthly from 40 to 80 times as much income as the lowest paid. In the United States, the difference is hardly ten times in favour of the higher paid. Which reveals the Communist-loathed capitalist system as achieving a closer approximation to Marxist ideals than Russian Communism. Communism based on the use of force has most to fear from knowledge. What is needed is a burning crusade in all nations and internationally to bring home the fact that arms and armed forces are criminally unjustifiable, and that universal total disarmament is essential if we are to escape from living perpetually under "balanced terror" that may topple any moment into atomic war.
J. MALTON
MURRAY
(Oamaru).
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 925, 3 May 1957, Page 11
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334UN INTERVENTIONS New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 925, 3 May 1957, Page 11
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