VALUES

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 24, 4 March 1942, Page 2

VALUES

WORSE QUALITIES PRE-

DOMINATE

"What we are witnessing in Europe to-day is not merely a war between nations, but the end of an age. There never x was a time when , the forces of evil were not active in I the world—never a time when men ( and nations did not do vile and evil things; never a time Avhen there existed a super-national force strong enough to prevent national and individual wrong doing. "But, granted this, in Europe till a few centuries ago there did at least exist a common standard of values to which men paid allegiance, or at least apologised for violating; and there did exist a super-national organisation—the Christian Church —which, acted as a broke on, if it could not prevent, the' evil-doing of States and men. "To-day the old common and accepted standards of value—that good was belter than evil, kindness* better than cruelty, love better than hate, fair play better than fraud and deception—have, ceased to op~ I crate over n large part of the glebe, and the Hood of evil still spreads. "The result is the vile and horrible world which now confronts us. r l he beginning is the weakening of old standards. The end is the terror that wa'keth by night. "There is no social problem in Britain that is not capable of an agreed solution, and without those values there is no order of society, no political* or economic programme, no party or class which will have us; for the message carried by every bomb, every shell, every ship, and every aeroplane in this war is the o'd message which you can put into whatever vocabulary you like, but whose essential content remains the fame; and it. is that 'except the Lord build the house they labour in vain who build it.'"