REPORT FROM LONDON
Cranston, Maurice
Report From London By MAURICE CRANSTON London ACAMPAIGN has been launched in this country by a very representative body, the National Peace Council, to secure public support for a "Constructive...
...Since then, however, he has received innumerable letters from others in the profession supporting his position...
...secondly, because it serves to remind people that a war does not end when the shooting stops, and that the creation of peace is just as much everybody's business as the achievement of military victory...
...ARECENT conference of the Variety Artists' Federation, British vaudeville performers' trade union, passed a resolution barring its members from appearing on the same stage as ex-enemy aliens for 10 years after the war...
...Ehrenburg and his colleagues not only have become intense Hun-haters of late, but have accused H. N. Brailsford and others of pro-Germanism for seeking a constructive rather than a vengeful peace...
...Frankau tells me there are more "progressives" in his profession than even he knew of, and he looks forward to seeing some of them stirred into action...
...The London Times has asserted that the Russian Control Commission even notified Finland's government that nationalization would be contrary to Russian interests...
...It has become commonplace in England to speak of "this revolutionary war," and there is a general belief that tremendous social changes will follow it...
...Hailed as a "victory of the left," the election was in fact more the opposite...
...It simply puts the world into a melting pot to be remolded for good or bad...
...United Nations statesmen at Yalta have been, and at San Francisco will be, considering the peace in terms of political and military security...
...The Versailles peace failed mainly for economic reasons...
...But Mr...
...E. F. Schumacher of Oxford, who is economic adviser to Sir William Beveridge and to the National Peace Council, must find a "living synthesis between planning and freedom" in the economic organization of the new world...
...It is timely for two reasons: first, because it coincides with the San Francisco Conference and gives the British people an opportunity to express their opinions about what is being decided on the other side of the globe...
...War is a bad thing, and cannot of itself produce a good thing...
...As Martin points out, there can be no lasting friendship between Soviet Russia and democratic countries unless Soviet writers acknowledge that differences of opinion can be both legitimate and sincere...
...They think of security in the sense of frustrating potential aggressors, and at that level their provisions appear to be quite adequate...
...The outcome gave Social Democrats (largely anti-Russian) and Popular Democrats (pro-Russian) slightly less, when added together, than half the vote received by the more traditionally conservative parties, with the Social Democrats running a little ahead of the Popular Democrats...
...THOUGH virtually unmentioned, one cleavage in party viewpoint in the recent Finnish parliamentary elections is important to understand...
...Important but ignored in most U. S. reports is the fact that the Communist-inspired Popular Democrats opposed the socialization of industry and finance on the ground that capitalist and conservative ownership of operation was needed if Finland were to pay her reparations to the Soviet Union...
...Ronald Frankau, one of England's most popular comedians, was the only one present who protested against this piece of Van-sittartism...
...The NPC, however, thinks of peace as being something more than the absence of war, and believes that the only way in which permanent security can be attained is to remove the causes of war...
...The next peace, says Prof...
...The National Peace Council wants us to take advantage of the opportunity to make a "good peace this time...
...One of the first principles of this good peace, the Council defines as "the abolition of poverty and unemployment and the raising of standards, both economic and cultural, through the maximum use and equitable sharing of all available resources...
...It seems to me that the National Peace Council has got much nearer to the root of the problem, and that the free governments of the world will either build up a peace on these lines or find themselves confronted once more with an "unfinished victory...
...The struggle was complicated, but the voting was expected to reveal 2 chief trends: how radical the public was after its nerve-shattering experiences, and how pro-Russian or anti-Russian...
...The stage is notoriously the home of political reaction here...
...But these changes, i* t*>ev are to be for the good, will not come willy-nilly...
...KINGSLEY MARTIN, editor of The Neiv Statesman, has called to task a number of Soviet journalists, and particularly Ilya Ehrenburg, for their misrepresentation of British liberal and internationalist opinion...
...Report From London By MAURICE CRANSTON London ACAMPAIGN has been launched in this country by a very representative body, the National Peace Council, to secure public support for a "Constructive Peace" policy...
...The Social Democrats, who on early returns had lost 33 seats, ran on a platform favoring nationalization of major industries, including banks...
Vol. 9 • April 1945 • No. 17
