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Dean of Canterbury reports on his visit to Moscow

-— Soviet Union»

es

ra PRAGUE.
Moscow is the peace centre
of the world,’ declared Dr.
Hewlett Johnson} Dean of Can-
terbury, at a press ‘conference
, here {this month as he passed.
« through ‘Prague on his way home
to Britain after visiting the Soviet
Nion to receive the Stalin Peace
rnize,
“It. was most appropriate,” said
the Dean, “that I should go to
°Scow to receive the award be-
Cause the Soviet government
means peace—it thinks peace, it
Speaks peace and it plans peace.”
r.+Johnson..said he. had. five
Srounds for believing that the
Soviet Union means peace.
“Firstly,” he said, “in the war
ae Suffered so terrible a destruc-
on that the Western world

NOws very little about. Second-

prete has reconstructed devas-
i €d cities , with remarkable
a Thirdly, she ‘plans larger
Pee ton works than man-
es has ever dreamed of before,
Puts them into execution.
Ourthly, her economy is such
: at peace is desirable and war
n intolerable hindrance because
oan a socialist economy she is
cea consume all she produces.
a,» She talks peace at home.
at . you are preparing to ‘in-
acl country, or, especially the
Claim. as the capitalist press
ais S the Soviet Union is doing,
nat Would have to begin a long
Die of _ stimulating people
the ean yar lice fervor. But in
ee Oviet Union, the word peace
bie ener are peace
even A and peace competitions,
© talk of war is a crime.”

aate Dean then cited the ad-
i On of the U.S. ambassador
ae eset said last winter
ass © could detect no signs in
pee . that an expert would ex-
Darin © find if people were pre-
_ 8 for war. “This is entire-
ene out by everything I
Oats Seok and not seen in the
o Union,” said Dr. Johnson.
ike ag the signs are just the
of €. They are not thinking
that aa but of vast plans. Plans
just Rely Stagger me. Here are
Rat ne or two examples.
‘the Or caching Moscow from
rT you see an immense ‘tow-
he, building. It is the new
ib It is, the largest
Of in ee buildings that I know
reds fe world, occupying hund-
Bhai acres of land and rising
fom, 25 stories high.
ist, vast university building
Ouse the scientific workers

erin.
- Un

Rt. Rev. Hewkitt Johnson, Dean of Canterbury

and students of Moscow. There
are 6,000 individual rooms for the
students, beautifully
and each, with its own shower
and lavatory. For the professors
there are suites of rooms. At
the moment there are a number
of sample rooms absolutely fitted
up, each in a different way to
see what type will be best. The
university is to be completed by
the end of this year and ready
to receive its 6,000 students.”

The Dean added that 43 of the
workers on the construction site
of the university will themselves
enter it as students immediately
it opens, and the following year
600 more construction workers
will enter as students.

“The university,” Dr. Johnson
declared, “is only one of some
six or seven sky scrapers in dif-
ferent parts of Moscow. I have
long been opposéd to skyscrapers
as I have seen them in the Unit-
ed States, in line after line in
long narrow streets, but in Mos-
cow they ‘are great beautiful
buildings, standing alone in dif-
ferent parts of the city, towering
into the sky and visible from
miles away.” ‘ ,
e

He then commented on the
tremendous increase in the num-
ber of automobiles in Moscow
since his last visit two years ago.
“There are streams and streams
of them, and they are all beauti-
ful cars,” he said. There is not
a bad car among them. You may
not have a bad car on the road
in Moscow.

“Artisans are beginning to
have their own cars. © Miners
have long had their own small
cars, like mine at home, but now
they are beginning to want big
cars. Some of the cars being
built today can be turned at
night into a bedroom with two
beds.”’ &: ea

The Dean went on to describe
how a park grew up overnight
in Moscow while he was there.
“Near the Bolshoi Theatre I saw
a great square. At sundown it
was just a square of concrete.
In the morning it was a park
complete with forest trees, 25 to
30 years old—lime trees and pear
trees in blossom. They had been
brought there overnight in huge
bowls of earth and planted. The
citizens of Moscow watched this
transformation with delight.”

“As for the food,” remarked
the Dean, “the least said the
better. I am only just beginning
to recover from the over-feeding
to which my wife and I were

furnishéd ~

\

subjected during our stay.”
Dr. Johnson said that he was

struck by the fact that everyone
was so well-dressed. « “If. they
aré wearing working clothes, they
are good working clothes,” he
said. ‘We saw almost no -one
who was poorly dressed.”

“However,” the .Dean declared,
“there was one thing I missed.
There were very few children to
be seen in the streets and I love
children. Then I-learned the
reason why. In the summer the
children ,are all taken out of
Moscow for two or three months
and are sent to the beautiful
parklands near Moscow where
their parents can visit them at
the weekends, or far away to
some of the lovely seaside places.”

r) .
The Dean pointed out that the

Western press maintains that the
vast construction works in the
Soviet Union are “merely paper

. projects and do not mean any-

thing in practice. So he had.ask-
ed to see some of them. — First
he visited Stalingrad.

“T last saw Stalingrad in 1945
—it..was a.complete wreck..To-

day there are beautiful parks, |

theatres, 170 schools have been
built in five years, hospitals,
great buildings and magnificent
flats for the workers. The Volga

_at Stalingrad is a beautiful river,

nearly a mile across. So that
the citizens of Stalingrad may
enjoy their lovely river, industry,
railways and everything are to
be moved from the river front
and promenades and fine build-
ings constructed.

“And outsitde Stalingrad,

‘stretching away into the coun-

tryside is house after house—fine
little houses with their own gar-
dens, individual houses. They
are built by the workers them-
selves—the government supplies
the land and the credit and the

.

“workers provide their own labor.
These houses are their own in-
dividual property which they may
pass onto-their children or give
away to anyone they please. Only
the land remains the property
of the state.”

The Dean then described how
he and his wife had flown over
the Volga: to the Don, over 80
miles of canal. He saw the be-
ginning of the great dam which
will be built over the Volga and
will raisé the water 25 feet.
“Thousands of people from all
over the Soviet Union are being
drawn into these vast construc-
tion works,” he said.

Dr. Johnson spent a day with
Lysenko, world-famous scientist,
and saw his farm and the fields
of wheat, each stalk bearing
three ears on it. He saw the way
the trees were developed for the
great afforestation projects, and
the scientific way the little oak
trees are grown so that they will
not be choked by the grass of
the steppes. -

“So many trees are to be plant-
ed in these afforestation pro-
jects,” said the Dean, “that they
would girdle the earth fifty times
at the equator.”

©

Asked whether he believed that
the Soviet Union would be able
to continue its peaceful work,
and whether the catastrophe of
war. could be avoided, Dr. John-
son declared:

“T think it is possible and I see

hopeful signs. It has been said
repeatedly in England and
America that it is in the inter-
ests of the Soviet Union to let
the Korean war go on, and that
if Russia wanted she could stop
the war in Korea. Now a Soviet
citizen, Jacob Malik, the Soviet
delegate to the [United Nations,
has taken the first step to stop
the conflict in the East. This
‘is a tremendous thing for the

works for peace

JUN By PATRICIA SAMSON CUE Me rte nt er tt or

cause of peace,

“If we have peace in Korea as
a result of a step from the So
viet Union, who can charge Rus-
sia with warlike intentions? I
expect great changes in the un-
dercurrents in England when I
return as a result of this.”

After declaring’ emphatically
that there was complete religious
freedom in the Soviet Union, the
Dean was asked what he would
like to say to Christians through-
out the world concerning peace.
Dr. Johnson replied:

“I said to Stalin when I spoke
to him for about an hour when
I was in the Soviet Union before,
“You kriow, Sir, you are reputed
to say you do not believe in God.
But you act as if you did be-
lieve in the Christian God, while
we who believe, many of. us, act
as if we did not believe in God."

“After receiving the Peace
Award,” Dr. Johnson concluded,
“IT said that we in the West owe
a great many things to the Hast.
Out of the East 2,000 years ago
came the message of human bro-
therhod as 4 desirable and pos-
sible thing. There came the word
of peace. _We welcomed: the word
but did not act on it.

“Now from the East comes an-
other great gift to the West—
that is the picture of world bro-
therhood put into practice in a
cooperative and peaceful society.
That vision of practice I am tak-
ing back with me. I would like
‘to recall the words of Jesus
Christ who said ‘not everyone
who sayeth Lord, Lord,~ shall
enter into the kingdom of heav-
en,’ but ‘he who doeth—he who
clothes the naked, houses the
homeless and feeds the hungry.

_ “In this Eastern part of the
world the word peace is an hon-
ored word—but in- my Western
world it is a misrepresented
word, a shunned word, and an
often persecuted word.”

“ rm ~ $ .
In the summer the children are all taken out of Moscow for two or three months and sent to

the beautiful parklands near Moscow where their parents can visit them at the weekends.”

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JULY 20, 1951 — PAGE 5

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