Rotary’s Quest For Peace“Outlaw War And Men Who Drag Nations Into War”

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 19, 6 February 1948, Page 4

Rotary’s Quest For Peace—- “ Outlaw War And Men Who Drag Nations Into War”

“Modern war means world war. “Peace, to be worth a damn, must be world peace. “We should not tolerate the assumption that war is inevitable. “We must work to make war unthinkable. We should outlaw war and the statesmen and politicians who. drag their countries into war as punishable for crime against humanity.” Those dynamic sentences are culled from an address to Whakatane Rotarians on Wednesday by President Frank Wise, of the Gisborne Rotary Club, who entitled his talk, “Rotary’s Quest for Peace.”

Mr Wise prefaced his remarks with reference to the fact that Rotary’s 43rd birthday fell on February 23, and he briefly traced the history of Rotary’s growth. It began in 1905 in Chicago, where four young men who missed the friendliness of their small town homes in that huge impersonal city met and laid plans for an organisation that would dispel big city loneliness with small town friendliness. The leader, a young lawyer, was Paul Harris, destined to become known as founder of a movement that has spread throughout the world, now has 6300 clubs with over 308,000 members and is still growing at the rate of one club a day: “Rotary does not foster friendship and fellowship for themselves alone, but as stepping stones to service,” Mr Wise said, “and first service today is Rotary’s quest for peace.” In Palestine Jew and Arab Rotarians met in amity. Moslems and Hindus in Indian Clubs were combining in rescue parties to save individuals who were victims of communal riots. There was only one country and its satellites which was not linked in' the chain, but he believed a change would eventually come, because no one country could say “no” to the rest of the world indefinitely. Mr Wise said he still thought it possible for people of different political opinions to get along harmoniously together. Paul Harris believed that planting seeds of goodwill and understanding would provide the ultimate solution to the world’s strife. In the last analysis, the quest for peace was an individual one. All should ask themselves what they were doing to that end.

Rotary had sat in in an advisory capacity at every meeting of the United Nations to date and had been called in a consultant capacity to the United States delegation to UNESCO, thus indicating the respect international statesmen had for its power to promote goodwill. It was the duty of individual Rotary Clubs, Mr Wise said, to nourish support for U.N.O. by informing themselves and their communities about the constructive work that is going on. Arch enemy to peace was indifference and ignorance amongst the ordinary citizens of all countries. “Permanent peace will not be achieved through statesmanship, conferences, or any such machinery alone; it can come only as the natural corollary of getting along with our fellow men,” the speaker asserted. We should not tolerate the assumption that war was inevitable. But, if it did come, it would be inevitable that whole populations would be wiped out, whole cities razed, wholesale misery spread Avorld-wide. We must work to make war unthinkable. The Kellogg-Briand Pact, aimed to outlaw war as an instrument of international policy, had not lasted, Mr Wise claimed, because it had lacked the backing of an informed body of public opinion. Rotary could perform the very highest type of service in building up a body of public opinion that would outlaw war in the future, and outlaw and punish as criminals against humanity the statesmen and politicians who dragged their countries into war.