Los Banos Rotary Club History
America Cannot Buy Friendship, Says Speaker

Summing up United Sates' post-war policy in the cold war to combat Communism throughout the world, Charles Sorter, manager of the Peerless Pump Corp., Fresno, told members of the Los Banos Rotary Club Tuesday that our lack of success is summed in four words: "You can't buy friendship."
Sorter recently returned from a three-months trip around the world, in which he endeavored to learn the economic conditions and the thinking of the people in countries fringing around the iron and bamboo curtains. Emphasizing that his findings and conclusions were based on his personal observations and should not be interpreted as "expert", Sorter said he is firmly convinced the final answer to Communism is not United States dollars, but a sharing of the principles on which our own nation was founded-liberty, freedom, and private enterprise.

"If we are to retrain Communism," he said, "we must discard our present "Santa Claus" economic policy and substitute a better philosophy—of life and government."

As poor examples of our Santa Claus actions, he cited a carload of blue buttons which this country bought and paid for and sent to China as a gesture of friendship—buttons which the Chinese people didn't want and couldn't use, and which were eventually dumped into the ocean as waste matter. And of a shipload of blacksmith tools sent for this country to a country whose people still farm with wooden plows, and have no need or possible use for blacksmith tools.

Economically, Sorter said that conditions through most of the world are becoming worse rather than better. While we have been endeavoring to financially assist countries and governments, the Communists, with their philosophy of hate and violence, have capitalized on "Irks" and built them up as big issue, offering the semi-enslaved peoples a promise of liberty and freedom, and the dignity of the individual.

New Member
Emil Erreca, of the Los Banos Flower Shop, was introduced at the luncheon as a new member of Rotary.

February 13, 1953

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