Soviet people discuss ending of state loans. MOSCOW The Soviet people have been asked to discuss a proposal that no more state loans should be floated this year. The proposal was put forward by Nikita Krushchevy, Com- munist party secretary, at Gorky last wéek. Auto union sets aim of 4-day week ATLANTIC CITY The pivotal United Auto ‘Workers has set the objective of securing a shorter work Week next year — with an increase in take-home pay. The action of the auto union’s convention, attended by 3,000 delegates representing 1.4 mil- lion members, heralds what might well be U.S, Labor’s Battle of the Decade. The stakes outlined in UAW President Walter Reuther’s re- bort are high. “The time is now at hand to Prepare for the next major ad- Vance in labor’s historic prog- Tess toward greater leisure,” Reuther said. He added that “it would be dangerously unrealistic to talk about a reduction in work hours with the same take-home Pay.” A reduction in hours must also be accompanied by an in- Crease in pay, he argued, be- Cause the big economic prob- lem is that the rise in produc- tivity is outstripping increases and the aim must be to “create in consumer purchasing power, the greater purchasing power Needed to balance our greater Productive power.” Details of the union’s de- Mands will be spelled out at a Special convention next Jan- uary, UAW contracts with the Big Three of the automobile industry will expire in late May and early June, 1958. While the special convention Will decide what form the Shorter hours demand will take, a sampling of rank and file opinion shows that most auto workers would prefer a four-day week rather than a Shorter working day. The UAW delegates. were Warned indirectly that their Ability to attain their economic Sbjectives next year might Inge on the outcome of the Present anti-labor drive, spark- €d by the McClellan Senate Committee hearings. “We have taken no decision yet,” he said. First the people must be consulted and their opinions considered. The proposal he put forward was that, as from 1958, the raising of state loans should - be ended, excluding only the short-term 3 percent interest loan. The annual state loans do not bear an interest payment but carry cash bonus lottery payments in the manner of Britain’s premium bonds. Krushchey said that these loans now totalled 260,000 million roubles. He said if these loans were to be discontinued then ~ the burden of paying winnings and redemption on them would have to be suspended at: the same time. The suggestion was to suspend the payment of loan winnings for a _ period of 20 to 25 years. But repayment of the loans would go on at the rate of about 13,000 million roubles a year, The money saved by freez- ing the loan winnings would be used in the suspension per- iod for building houses, schools, hospitals, maternity homes and creches. Krushchey also announced that the state loan for this year, originally planned to be 26,000 million roubles, would now be reduced to 12,000 mil- lion roubles, or by more than half. Although -contributions to” state loans have not been com- pulsory, there has been a good deal of moral pressure in fac- tories to contribute. The ef- fect of theif abolition will be that the great majority of workers will have more spending money. In the same speech, Krush- chev said that as far as the volume of production was con- cerned the Soviet Union had outdistanced “such industrial- ly advanced countries as Bri- tain, France and some others. “We have left them so far behind us that they are not even hoping to catch up with us again, nor will they ever do it, of course,” he said. He said that in the Soviet Union men lived “not. for personal gain but for the ad- vancement of the entire coun- try, for raising the living standards and cultural stand- ards of our entire people. No capitalist. will ever under- stand this,” ANEURIN BEVAN World meet urged DELHI A call for an early meeting of the world’s top statesmen to prevent a drift “toward the disaster of an atomic war,” was made in Delhi, India, last week by Aneurin Bevan, MP, the British Labor party’s chief foreign affairs spokesman. He warned that another crisis like that. over Suez might “blow up the human race.” Prisoners released MADRAS On orders of the Commun- ist government of the Indian state of Kerala, 131 prisoners, some of. them serving life sen- tences have been released from the state’s central prison in Trivandrum. This action followed the Kerala government’s an- nouncement that it would grant amnesty to all political prisoners. Its right to do so was first denied by the Indian Central government, but later it announced that it had been in error and Kerala had the right to release them. Self-government aim LAGOS Eastern Nigeria will ask for self-government from Britain this year Premier Azikiwe an- nounced last. week stating that his government wanted the whole of Nigeria to have self- government by 1959 “when the whole country should en- joy dominion status. Nigeria is divided into three regions with separate govern- ments and a federal govern- ment over them. All four gov- ernments are to send dele- gates to a conference in Lon- don next month. Returns to Hungary The Hungarian government has allowed Professor Gydrgy Lukacs, a leading Marxist lit- erary critic and former min- ister of education in the Imre Nagy government to return to Hungary. Budapest Radio said Lukacs had sent a letter to the Hun- garian government “asking for permission to return in order to continue: his _ scientific studies.” i Lukacs, who is now nearly 70, was profesor of aesthetics at Budapest University. With Nagy, he has been in-exile in Rumania since November. NEXT SHEP? H-tests for world court LONDON Japan should go to the International Court at The Hague over the proposed British H-tests at Christmas Island. That’s the personal opinion of Dr. Matsushita, special Japanese envoy, expressed last week as he con- cluded his 10-day “Stop the H-tests’’ mission to Britain. The court, he said, should be asked for an advisory op- inion on whether the tests do not infringe freedom of the high seas, in view of the fact that Britain wants to close large areas of the Pacific Oc- ‘ean surrounding the tests. Dr. Matsushita, who is presi- dent of St. Paul’s University in Japan and himself an in- ternational lawyer, saw Bri- tish Prime Minister Harold Macmillan a second time be- fore he left Britain, to visit first the Netherlands, then It- aly, Switzerland and the Unit- ed States. Macmillan told him that he had = given more thought to Japan’s opposition to the tests, but was not changing British policy. Macmillan _ repeated his claim that their effect would be “insignificant.” The -British government is reported to be planning to let off several megaton-size nuc- lear weapons, probably in May. Dr. Matsushita summed up his stay as “quite successful,” despite the lack of change, in British policy, for it had brought better understanding of Japan’s difficulties on the question of nuclear tests. The next step apart from going to the International Court? — Dr. Matsushita thought that Japan should try again and again to raise the question of halting and ban- ning the tests whenever op- portunity. presented itself. India’s first five-year plan includes a mass education pro- gram for adults and children. Hundreds of thousands of workers and peasants will learn to read and write in the country with the largest illiterate population in the world: A-scientists protest BERLIN Eighteen leading West Ger- man atom scientists have an- nounced that none of them is prepared ‘‘to take part in any way in the production, testing or operation of atomic wea- pons.” Last week they signed a declaration issued by the Max- Planck Society in Goettingen saying that .a*small country like West Germany could at present protect itself and serve world peace best by renounc- ing the possession of all kinds of atomic weapons. APRIL 19, 1957 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 3