PEACE IDEALS FOR THE FUTURE

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 57, 2 December 1918, Page 5

PEACE IDEALS FOR THE FUTURE

• PUTTING THINGS RIGHT. "WITH ALL QUR HEARTS" (Speaking at tho Town Hall, Mil-field (Yorkshire, England), on September 15, Sir Thomas Whittaker, M.P., said:— As a nation wo had a giant's task before us after tho war was over—to reestablish our industry, to recover our trade abroad, to reconstruct much of tho fabric of our industrial life. At the. same time wo had got to cany an enormous debt aud would have to bear crushing taxation. At tho same time alsj we were talking about social reforms, the cost of which would have made us gasp before the war, a.nd which wo were now going to face when half the world would be bankrupt and all countries would have a millstone, round their neck. Was it too much, then, to ask Hint everyone should manifest good will and do their best to foster genuine co-operation rather than division and conflict: and suspicion and closs severance'!' If we were to, work together for the common good' at such a time of epoch-making opportunities we must seek to emp'hasise agreements rather than divisions, to put things in their true perspective, and to realise vhat was fundamentally important. To do.that there must be a good deal of give and take. A Labour member of tho Government said the othea- day that there were men amongst us who were playing with the . fires of revolution. They were doing so when there was-a great deal of explosive human nature about, and it was as dangerous to the State as smoking in an explosives factory to others who were in and about it. They did not understand tho questions they were dealing with, and they were suffering from conditions the remedy for which they did not understand, and some of them were striking out wildly and blindly. But lie (Sir Thomas) at any rate did not despair because foolish things were said and questionable policies advocated. We had never all been wise, and most of us had been foolish at times. Generations ago the governing power'of oua- country was in the hands of the well-to-do class, with all the 'advantages of education arid leisure and wide knowledge of the world and of the- history of the pastj and even they blundered sadly. Ho believed that, unwittingly, they 'often did great injustice; and we must not be surprised if serious error, and impossible and disastrous schemes, found place in the minds of poorer people who felt very keenly the evils from which they suffered. We must remember, however, that injustice or tyranny by any class, and economic or moral error, would always bring ultimately their own defeat. Militarism, in.Germany was doing so now, and any section or class that had political power and used it tyrannically and purely selfishly would eventually suffer for it. Freedom and justice were the essentials, and both were impossible when force, or the threat of force, was substituted for either. Both freedom and justice meant restraint, regulation, tho acceptance of, and obedience tOi la-w----and, "authority that sprang from representative government. Resistance to law and authority, resort to defiance and force, meant anarchy, and that meant starvation and misery, as they had found in Russia. Mob rule was no rule—it was passion, greed, envy, and hatred .run riot. Law and government were the protection of the poor : 'and the weak, and tho curb'of the powerful. But nothing was perfect, and laws needed revision and reform.. Governments were often weak and unwise, but even then they were better than anarchy. Russia was infinitely worso off under Socialist rule than under the Tsar, defective and often unjust as that was. Our own laws and government were by no means perfect, and they never would be because human nature was not perfect. But out government, with all its faults, was thb best, the -freost, and the purest this world had over produced- Of all tho great -Empires the world had ever seen ours was unquestionably the most liberal, tho least intolerant, and tho most just. This war bad shown that with all its faults, our (people thought that Britain was well worth fighting for—so much so that no small number had thought it worth dying for. Our men were fighting not only for the England we had, but for the England, we'desired it to be, the vision of which they had surely seen-.-"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; He is tramplin? out the vintage where the gra-nes of wrath are stored; He hath looßed the fatal lightning of His terrible swift sword; His truth is marching on. "I have seen Him in the watch fires of a hundred circling camps; Thoy have builded Him an altar in tho evening dews and- damps; I can read His rtehtomiß sentence by the dim and flaring lamps; , His day is marching on.'