Peace and Propaganda

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 102, 24 January 1935, Page 11

Peace and Propaganda

Sir.—ln your issue of Saturday the New Zealand Welfare League has drawn attention to the kind of propaganda being used by' people who are obsessed with tiie idea that disarmament, complete and absolute, is the only guarantee of peace. Jijst at present there are so many assertions and counter-assertions on the different aspects of war and its causes, particularly with reference to munitions and armament making, that one is prompted to ask wiiat is the attitude of our antiwar friends to the export trade in scrap iron. Presumably it might be useful for military purposes. Then one would like to know whether our shipping companies and scrap metal merchants are doing a wrong thing in selling. Are they to be classed as munition merchants and warmongers? Scheelite is produced in this Dominion and exported, niainly to be used in hardening steel. Is this industry to cease because the steel might be used in war? Wool for clothing material, which may be used to equip armies, is sold to foreigners. Will this have to stop? Ask our farmers.

War never really settled anything, so it is safe to say that we all want peace; but peace will never be achieved by questionable propaganda or appeals to unreasoning ignorance. To insinuate that the motives of other people are not above reproach, is more likely to be provocative of trouble. AU causes of war start in individuals; therefore the best preventive of war is the proper training of the individual. The third and fourth chapters of the Epistle of James, provide much food for true thinking on this subject.—l am, etc., W.A.T. Wellington, January 21.