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The Dominion FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1926. A PAUSE—IN MEMORIAM

The chimes of the hour, and the boom of a gun at eleven o’clockyesterday morning, brought the community and its affairs to a solemn pause in a reverent salute to the memory of those who gave their lives tor their country in the greatest human conflict in history. For two minutes' humanity stood stijl, and a great silence descended. 1 hen life moved forward once more. • those solemn minutes measured tremendous spaces of thought. The interval seemed prolonged. Time, psychologically speaking, is a matter, of' relativity.- There are occasions of great stress when an hour, a day, or a week, is as a moment. There are others when minutes seem' hours, nad weeks seem j/ears. It depends upon the state of mine!, the. nature of the occasion. Twelve years ago the vast forces of. the warring nations were manoeuvring for position after the first, shocks of the conflict. Eight years; ago the <f cease .fire! ■ sounded across the continents and the oceans,, and civilisation, bruised and shaken,'turned once more to the arts of peace. ■ . Twelve years ago old men of to-day were in their prime, young men were at school, school children were either infants or unborn. To the rising generation-'the War is a matter of history, not, as to their elders, an experience of personal contact either in action or as the victims of its tragic reactions. i As the picture-slowly-recedes the" details become, dimmer, but its general perspective beedfhes more definite. We realise now, with increasing conviction, that whatever its. justification, the War was a terrific travesty of modern civilisation. But its impressive repercussions, disastrous and poignant, touch immediately only those who passed through the experience. If it depended solely on their verdict a repetition of the cataclysm need never be apprehended. The difficulty is that the future course of events will be directed by generations to whom the war, seen from a distance through the pages of history, will assume eventually the spectacular splendour of a gigantic heroic episode. It has always been the same/ To the average imagination, the Crimean War means little more than the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava, or the Thin Red Line at the soldiers’ Battle of Inkerman. .Otir admiration for'tire heroic has all the impelling power of a human instinct. Men react spontaneously to its appeal when called upon to do likewise when peril looms up. It is good for the valour and pride of the race, for the morale of the nation, that this should be so, but the cold logic of fact demands that attention should also be given to war’s darker side—its brutalities, its miseries, its economic destructiveness.

Out of evil comes, good.. In the then circumstances of the case, it is difficult to see how the War could have been avoided. Europe was armed to the teeth. Military preparedness had reached a stage when suspicion and panic were in the air, and very little sufficed to cause the inevitable stampede.. The nations emerged from the experience convinced of the folly of it all, but it. has taken eight years to bring them to. the point of regarding the League of Nations as a possible practical instrument for-, preserving, .international peace by friendly intercourse at regular conferences, instead of a Utopian dream conceived in the brain of a visionary? The Pact of Locarno cleared the air and enabled the nations concerned to take stock of the future with some degree of security in the present. The September meeting of the League of Nations admitted Germany into the peace partnership. Russia, the pariah nation, is still making mischief, but she is facing a growing array of international opinion/ . ■ We are still a long way from the millennium, but we have left the atmosphere of Versailles definitely behind us. As the British Prime Minister remarked in his speech at the Lord Mayor’s banquet, the nations have returned to a peace mentality. The hope .is growing stronger that our soldiers have not fought in vain.

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Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/DOM19261112.2.58

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 41, 12 November 1926, Page 8

Word count
Tapeke kupu
675

The Dominion FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1926. A PAUSE—IN MEMORIAM Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 41, 12 November 1926, Page 8

The Dominion FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1926. A PAUSE—IN MEMORIAM Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 41, 12 November 1926, Page 8

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