PEACE: A STATE OF ACTIVE EFFORT

Britain's Macmillan Calls for Economic Push

After once turning back to London when his Britannia turboprop airliner sprang an oil leak, Britain's Prime Minister Harold Macmillan flew into Washington, then on to Greencastle, Ind. (22,-300) this week to deliver the commencement address at De-Pauw University, successor to the medical school attended by his Hoosier maternal grandfather in 1849. Spelling out "why the Soviet Union has satellites while in the free world we have allies," Macmillan laid out in cousinly candor the tough-minded assumptions that hold the free world together. Excerpts:

AFTER the first World War a sense -- of shock made many statesmen and people begin to think in terms outside the old pattern of national states, and to make a move along the path to a world unity. But the first League of Nations was a bold and noble effort to produce, in Pascal's words, "a world in which force is just and justice has force at its disposal." After the second World War a new attempt was made. In the first flush of enthusiasm the founders of the United Nations organization believed that they had found the answer. In the Security Council, mainly dominated by the great powers, was to be found the germ of a world administration or cabinet, and in the Assembly the beginning of a world congress or parliament. But once again events have proved too strong for us. To make anything like a world community all at once has been too big a step; and this time the attempt has foundered on the deep division in the world between two different concepts of society, of government, of man himself, and of man's relation to his Creator.

So there has grown between two great blocs of nations the division between what we roughly call the free world and the Communist world. There are some who feel that this struggle is necessarily fated to end either in war or by the triumph of revolutionary Communism. I believe that to be too pessimistic a judgment. Of course the free world must be firm as well as fair. We must not lower our guard. We must not fall victim to propaganda or to mere exhaustion. Nor must we delude ourselves by wishful thinking. We must not conceive of peace as a state of inactivity, something that can be just enjoyed; it has to be won by struggle and effort.

Nevertheless, in the long view I cannot believe that a country like Soviet Russia, developing so rapidly in all the technical, scientific and material improvements of life, will not in due course be subjected to the normal development of all civilized people.

period of mass murder and torture and revolutionary methods becomes more and more remote, as the standard of the people rises, surely these very intelligent people will not be content forever with what is called the materialist doctrine. Sooner or later, however strong or coercive the central government, these men and women will begin to ask themselves the questions that man has always posed since first he came into the world. They will ask themselves the old questions and search for the answers: Who made us; why are we here; what is the purpose of life; is there right and wrong; is there sin; is there God?

No one who has studied the Marxist writers can fail to be impressed by the emphasis placed on destructive criticism of the capitalist system. Violent trade cycles and war are said to be inevitable products. Of course, we know that this is an utterly false view. Nevertheless, two things are true, which we have not yet all learned. First, prosperity, like peace, is indivisible; secondly, there are still too many artificial barriers to the free flow of money and trade in the free world. Just as the economies of the states of the Union of this continent grew together two hundred years ago, so, in some measure at least, must the economies of the free world today.

Since the war the U.S. has with unexampled generosity poured out its treasure all over the world, first to help its allies who were impoverished in the joint defense of freedom, and then to foster and protect the young economies of the newly independent states. All too little credit has been given for this; indeed, often you have found ingratitude.

But we have got to live and build, while we have the time, a fuller and freer world for ourselves. We have got to see that not only our military alliances but our political thought and economic policies match up to the level of the great scientific and technical advances which the world has made. Whether it be in a great Commonwealth like ours or a great continent like yours, we can no longer afford to think parochially.

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