RACIAL EQUALITY
Sta,—As a worker trying to promote the basic principles underlying the Charter of U.N.O., U.N.E.S.C.O. and similar organisations, I feel some- what stunned by the statement of General Smuts, quoted by Reuter's, that "the idea of racial equality simply does not work." I have for many years regarded the speeches of General Smuts as a little hollow and platitudinous, but I was not prepared for this forthright denial of what he seems to have been preaching. Smuts was among those said to be responsible for the Charter, with its fine phrasing, particularly Article I, Section 2: "To develop friendly relations based • on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples."
Now, it would appear, when :these principles come home to roost in. his own domains, he immediately denounces them, and, to rub it in, throws a scare among the white peoples of the world by a warning that coloured races have a two-to-one majority in the U.N. Assembly. Were any other statesman to utter such a warning it would be regarded as extremely mischievous by most reasonable men. That it will be used eventually against the British Empire by coloured peoples, and nations comprising coloured races, such as the U.S.S.R., is almost certain. Equality of races does work, and can be made to work a great deal more. I have lived among coloured peoples for thirty years and know from experience. If it "does not work" in South Africa, as Smuts declares then the ruling authorities there have much to answer for to the rest of
mankind in search of peace.—Yours, &c., 0. D. RASMUSSEN. Castlegate, Tonbridge, Kent.
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