TIME FOR CLEAR THINKING

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 17, 4 February 1937, Page 4

TIME FOR CLEAR THINKING

" Tbe post-War confusion of international relations is a familiar proof of obstinate and prejudiced thinking. The harvest of the years has been a bitter one, and in retrospect we are now unanimous in indicating its source. We realise that when world politicians and Europeans leaders sat at the council tables of Yersailles their decisions were overladen with the passions and prejudices of the times. "Habits of thought, fostered by four years of war, were not scrapped as they might well have been by a council facing the task • of designing years of peace. Any group of soientists who tried to conduct their work by the same methods could not avoid blowing up their laboratories during their first experiments. As it is, we have witnessed the long series of explosions which have rocked the European laboratOry ever sinoe, until it seems that we may at any momenfc expect the laSt upheaval which will blow our little world to chaos. "Yet we can venture to assume that if politicians of the peace had been governed more by tbe patience, clarity and impartiality : whieh cbaracterises workshop thinking, tbis turning point in history must have heralded a more constructive era in world affairs. Clearly, the, old ways of thinking have proved ineffectual. We must discipline ourselves into practical thinking as a preliminary to straightthe political and social problems of the day. We shall find the best means available by studying the eritioal and honest attij tude which the scientist or the engineer brings to his wqrk,"=— Sir Harold Bellmam.