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Show Peace On the Spot -By-GEORGE HICKS In an effort to keep abreast of the times and furnish its readers with information on developments at the World Peace Conference in San Francisco, Calif., The Springville Herald has made arrangements for a representative at the Peace Conference Con-ference in the person of George Hicks, noted radio announcer and columnist, to send each week a review of the highlights of the Conference, together with many interesting sidelights on this history-making event. JTe will send short excerpts from interviews with every class of people, and will aim to present the opinon of the common com-mon man on the street and his reactions to the Conference. He will aim in his reviews to paint a true picture of the Golden Gate city and to bring to readers of The Herald, true facts and developments of the Conference as they transpire. The first of a series of articles on the Conference is published pub-lished this week with the caption, "Peace On The Spot," as follows: address is very pertinent: "Those who have come together to talk, must arrange to keep on talking. If they break up and go home to resume their separate ways, then the opportunity to create order will have been lost, until a new disaster brings the group together again. To produce a program which will prevent that break-up and assure continuing association is the technical task of the San Francisco conference." You and I, along with our boys and girls, were represented by 17 service men and women a guard of honor. They got a big ovation. Don't believe the pessimists in regard to the rotation chairmanship chairman-ship matter. It will be settled peacefully. SIDELIGHTS: Here they are delegates from( 46 countries from all over the world. Three trainloads arrived within a few hours of each other recently. It is no international prayer meeting that is going on here, but the majority of folks I have interviewed are optimistic about the outcome. Poland is the red-hot issue of course. Our realistic Russian friends are standing pat on their backing of the government of their choice, but that does not mean failure by any means. That is what this meeting is for: to talk things over in the good old American Ameri-can way. A cloud on the horizon is the holdover of former international settlements. So, get used to a lot of unorthodox thinking and talk- A whole shipload of vodka and caviar arrived at San Francisco for the Russian contingent recently recent-ly .. . Whoops me lad! Seven amendments to the Dumbarton Dum-barton Oaks agreement have been drawn up by the Dutch delegation to present . . . Dutch courage, eh? Big debate: It will center around Russia's right to say whether or not it will go to war against a nation termed an aggressor ag-gressor by a majority of the oth-( oth-( Continued on Page Ten) ing. I The monster mass-meeting held out here by the Federal Council Churches of Christ in America, with John Foster Dulles, consultant consul-tant to U. S. delegates at the Conference, Con-ference, as the speaker, interprets the church's attitude. It is a firm stand for a Christian peace. When I met Mr. Dulles at the close of the meeting, he was very optimistic about the outcome, but I he did not minimize the difficulties difficul-ties ahead. This excerpt from his Peace On The Spot... (Continued from page 1) er council nations .... Takes more than vodka to decide. The cautious State Dept. seems to have ruled that no U. S. delegates dele-gates are supposed to express personal per-sonal opinions in regard to the conference. And that later, official offi-cial statements will be released by the delegation through the State Dept. itself . . . What price silence? si-lence? There are just 1,856 "gentlemen of the press" here covering the big meet including Walter Win-chell Win-chell plus my own number, of course . . . Most people can get my number easily. STACATTOS: Czechoslovakian delegate: "It seems that little nations should be seen and not heard." But he said he might make a big noise later. Colored Episcopal minister: "A Teader has died to seal the success suc-cess of this Peace Conference . . . Therefore it will succeed." John Foster Dulles: "There must be peace by the practice of j righteousness ... a congress of nations that will finally include our late enemies." Elevator man : "If they make as much preparation for peace as they did for war, we will have permanent peace." Canadian Press representative : "Why don't the smaller nations adopt a plan like the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation that is meeting with such success in Canada. Can-ada. That would do more to keep the peace at home as well as abroad." The Canadians should know. Dr. Virginia Gildersleeve -the only woman delegate for U. S. : "I want to see a give-and-take spirit prevail" . . . She may win her bet. The opening day was exactly 5 years, 7 months and 25 days after war started. It was solemn, simple and snappy. A strange, subdued spirit brooded over the great gilded gild-ed palace of the opera, with its 46 flags of all nations in a friendly flutter on the platform. The throng seemed to be waiting for some great world leader to appear miraculously in their midst. Maybe the spirit of Franklin Roosevelt. The spell of silence at the opening open-ing was broken by the click of newsreels and the flashlight of movie cameras. A truly American scene it was, with the jovial cameramen paying as much attention to the Western Union messenger standing at the elbow of the great, as they did to dapper little Molotov with the enigmatical smile. A world drama unfolding before the eyes of a scared and no-less scarred, war-weary war-weary world. In a press conference Molotov said: "You can't solve the Polish question without the Poles." Anthony An-thony Eden, went on record with: "This is the last chance for mankind'' man-kind'' in relation to a peace organization. orga-nization. Says Raymond Swing: "This thing is not fool-proof." Said Kaltenborn: "We must rise above national interests." And we were all glad to hear Molotov declare: "Russia will abide by the Yalta decisions." So, "this last hope for mankind" is off to a good start. There'll be lots more to tell next week. (Continued next week) |