ABSTRACT
Following his urgent summons to Peking to act as New Zealand’s representative at the preparatory meeting for the Asia-Pacific Peace Conference, Alley was immediately put to work on China’s ‘peace’ propagandising. On 11 and 12 June 1952 he read a speech on Peking Radio criticising New Zealand’s participation in the Korean War. This speech was broadcast to both Australia and New Zealand:
New Zealand, as part of Australasia, can have only one real interest, and that interest must be for peace, and the security she needs to develop herself. To have a lasting peace in New Zealand there must be a just peace in Asia. Factual, geographical links of our country with Asia makes that an imperative necessity. Yet the recognition of that necessity is too often obliterated by considerations that would link New Zealand only with the old Europe, instead of with our immediate neighbours whose destiny must finally be our destiny. . . . There are economic and cultural links that can be forged to bring the peoples of Asia and Pacific together and make for a new base for understanding. . . . New Zealanders must ask themselves: ‘Why have the old militarists been brought back in Japan? Why are the Japanese peoples’ organisations suppressed? What may that mean to New Zealand? Why do Americans oppose a settlement in Korea, while giving it lip service? Who wants to kill whom? Who wants to make money by war?’1
