ae

FORY OF THE WORLD PEACE MOVEMENT

_ ended.

ee "And everyone believed that
| the people had become wiser,
| that a new era was beginn-
ing. ’
|) But could the jubilant peo-
| ple know that only a few
months would pass and that
_ asquare-built, thick-set heavy-
_ jawed man would go across
| the ocean and in the little
American town of Fulton
) would take the cigar out of
| his mouth just to sound the
_ eall for a new war even more
horrible than the one just
) ould the men and women
| gathered in the squares of the
world’s capitals foresee that
only a few years would pass
and the flames of war would
flare up in Vietnam, Indo-
 nesia, Malaya?
” Who in these days could
| have foreseen that five years
| later, under the blue flag of
} the United Nations, American
} troops, together with cut-
_ throats of the South Korean
dictator, would plough up the
_ long-suffering soil of Korea
with high explosives and
scorch it with napalm?

However, in 1949, when the

Marshall Plan was tightening
more and more around the
“necks of many nations, when
the framing of monstrous
_ NATO plans was drawing to
a close, some people realized
it was necessary to act,

British and U.S. generals,
together with the survived
Nazi Obersturmbannfuhrers,

‘staffs at tables littered with
‘maps of the Soviet Union.

anyone- had told them

of Europe, America and
a mere handful of peo-
inspired by a desire to
the peoples to fight
[| a new war, were
eting under the chairman-
p of the great scientist
id great citizen Frederic
ot-Curie; in Paris, in a
e house in Elysee Street,
‘these staff officers dressed in
gold - embroidered uniforms
nd decorated with stars
‘would: most likely have smiled
thscorn.
‘They could not grasp the

as the growth of such people’s
consciousness.

sat in the officers of their -

meaning of such concepts ,

They shut their eyes to the
rise of the great camp of
peace and socialism and
underestimated the intensity
of the hatred that the peoples
who went through the war
with Hitlerism felt for the in-
stigators of a hew war.

The fatal miscalculations of
the enemies of peace became
increasingly obvious with
every day. :

At that time, in 1949, there
was as yet no many-mil-
lion-strong movement of the
peoples against war. It was-
only the International Com-
mittee of contacts between
cultural leaders in defence of
peace that met in Elysee
Street.

But already 75. different
social and professional or-
ganizations declared their
support for the Committee.

And so, one spring day, the
following telegram was sent
from Paris to all the capitals
of the world: ‘

“A World Peace Congress
is to be held in Paris in the
middle of April. We invite
you to attend, and expect
your support.”

A comparison with a rolling
snowball, with an avalanche,
does not even give a remote
idea of how fast the world
movement for peace grew and
spread,

@ Hundreds of sponsoring

committees sprang up in all >

countries.

@ Petitions
United Nations.

@ Millions of signatures,
thousands of telegrams.

@ Countless newspaper
articles.

@ Picasso’s famous white
dove, soaring skywards and
unattainable to the enemies’
poisoned arrows.

The enemies of peace and
of the peoples sought to stem
the mighty stream. They shout-
ed that the struggle for peace
was an invention of the Com-
munists.

‘It was difficult to devise an
accusation which could raise
higher. prestige of the Com-

munists throughout the world!

‘Indeed, the Communists
were, as always, in the front
ranks of the fighters against
‘war. But-they were only a
part of the great legion.

“The peace movement was
joined by organizations and

flooded the

‘en years that saved the world!

IN THE spring of 1945 the peoples of the anti-
Hitler coalition celebrated their victory days. Re-
ping crowds filled Red Square in Moscow, made
merry in front of Buckingham Palace in London,
yictory day in New York became a Prayer Day.
The long months and years of grim trials had

Hundreds of millions of people in all countries of the world signed Bin the Bomb peti-
tions back in 1950. Photo shows Canadian Peace Congress chairman Dr. J. G. Endicott and
secretary Mary Jennison counting petitions as they poured in from city and town in. Canada.

“people whose views had so

little in common with Marx-
ism that only liars and ignor-
amuses could declare that
they were Communists.
Clergymen who upheld the
belief in the immaculate con-
ception, philosophers propa-
gating Bergson and Freud, re-
spectable bourgeois and Social
Democrats, physicans and Bud-
dhist monks remote from pol-
itics, protagonists of art for
art’s sake, abstractionists and
impressionists, businessmen
and manufacturers, joined their
voices to the millions of voices

of ordinary people througout _

the. world: who would become
the first victims of a future
war.

Capitalist governments left
nothing undone to stem the
movement for peace. They

threatened them with jails—
and not infrequently
threats into effect.

The sponsors of the first
congress in Paris were com-
pelled to call a parallel con-
gress in Prague, inasmuch as
the French government re-
stricted the admission of dele-

gates.
So, whilé more than 2,000
delegates gathered on an

April morning in the Pleyel
Hall in Paris, over 300 ‘“non-
admitted” delegates also open-
ed their meeting in Prague,
illustrating the truth that the

peace movement recognizes
“no frontiers, and that police
restrictions are powerless
against it.

The. Paris-Prague congress.
The establishment of the
World Peace Council,

put their

The Stockholm session of
the Council and the famous
Stockholm Appeal demanding
unconditional outlawing ~ of
atomic weapons. The half of
a billion signatures under
the Appeal collected within
eight months.

The attempt to hold the
next congress in London. The
prohibitive actions: of the
British Government. The
Warsaw Congress, °

A session of the World
Peace Council . Another
session. More appeals. . .

These are some of the vis-
ible landmarks of the struggle
for peace. But how many vol-
umes should be written to
create a complete chronicle.of
this movement, which has. no
parallel in history?

June 26, 1959 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 5

t
“