POST-WAR WORLD

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 16, 14 October 1943, Page 4

POST-WAR WORLD

Urgency Of Early Planning ARCHBISHOP’S VIEWS Dominion Special Service. AUCKLAND, October 13. “Rotary is on its trial and if the movement is to fulfil its destiny and live up to its international ideas it must beware lest it lose its great opportunity through lack of vision,” said Archbishop Averill in an address to the Auckland Rotary Club yesterday. The war, he continued, was not yet won, and the greatest strain on the people of the Allied Nations might still be ahead. Yet it was not too soon to plan for the post-war world. This was indeed a matter of urgency and it was essential that the unity so necessary in bringing victory to the Allies should be maintained for the assurance of .peace to a war-weary world. Definite statements such as the Atlantic Charter, and the fundamentals for a new world order as outlined by the combined religious forces in England had already done much to clarify the position and make clear to all men that the United Nations were not fighting for increased power or territory or sovereignty over other nations or any selfish ends, but tor tae establishment of principles which would give freedom and justice to all. The problems in reaching this goal were numerous and almost staggering in their complexity but now was the tunc -to tackle them, Archbishop Averill continued. If Rotary clubs throughout tie world, possessing as they did first-hand knowledge of the living conditions in the countries in which they operated, were to study these post-war problems anti forward their findings to Rotary headQuarters the movement should be capable of making a most valuable contribution to the desired ends. . The archbishop said he was convinced of the great need for more careful study, not only of the ideals and characteristics of the British Empire and of the United States but of ail countries, because interdependence, not independence, must be the watchword of the future. Science had converted the world into a neighbourhood, but the true spirit of neighbours could be observed only superficially unless we knew and understood something of the minds and hearts of the inhabitants of countries other than our own. ' Rotary was not a religion, bur. it was based ou the essential principles of religion and had, he believed, been raised up for such a time as this, when the world’s great need was brotherhood and unity based on the only true foundation, the Fatherhood of God.