PULLING DOWN TO BUILD UP

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 8, Issue 24, 14 November 1944, Page 7

PULLING DOWN TO BUILD UP

SCIENCE KNOWS NO RACIAL BARRIERS General Leese, the commander-of the Eighth-Army, is a "great mixer." Driving along in a jeep he talks to his driver and in a tank he chats with, the crew. The men: like him .because he is "one of them" and does not stand on prestige and position. The fence between them disapears in the laughter and "back chat" which the General keeps up with liis men. The General knows that the secret ol' confidence between leader and followers, lies in a mutual regard—and a mutual disregard for those fences which divide men. The fcnces arc going down. Let us keep them and bury them deep. One of them is the racial fence. That fence indeed is not cni tirely down. It. is still heavy and barbed with and the posts which keep it up arc strong in many places. But there are big gaps. The. peoples of the world are mixed up as never before and they intend to stay mixed up. Amcrica i Britain, Russia and China are working together as never before. The vast majority of the peoples of these countries like it and want to keep working together. In America there is a textile mill in which the sorting is done by an Englishman carding by an Italian spinning by a Swede drawing by a Scot, scouring by an Albanian, dyeing by a Turk pressing by a Pole* Supervised by an 'Irishman they are making American flags. The fences arc going down because men now see how wrong they arc. The world we live in was intended by God to be a free, lovely place in which every child of His should be able to live a noble, beautiful life. Then came the selfishness and pride of mail which erected fences between people of different countries education race and col- ') '5 our. "God made all nations of one blood." He distributed the talents of man very widely among various countries and various peoples. It was, for instance a Japanese scientist Kitasato, who isolated the tetanus germ. New Australia and American soldiers fighting in the Far East are dependent for their lives- on his discovery. Landsteiner, an Austrian has saved millions of men by his work on the blood stream which led to blood-transfusion. Typhoid's terror was destroyed by Metchni'koff, a Russian. a Frenchman j and Ivoch, a German, finally dealt with surgical infection and so gave hope to every wounded man on the world's battlefields. Science and learning know no fences-. Men speak across the frontiers easily when they speak in — terms of knowledge. That spirit of brotherhood must come, into every fact of the. world's life. Men must comc and go across the frontiers and fences with ease and with a glad Avclcome on the other side. If we sec good in the other man we must seek it out. and believe ill it. That he speaks another language, or lives in another country, must not prevent us from recognising in him a leader and a brother.