LETTERS TO EDITOR

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 77, 23 December 1937, Page 6

LETTERS TO EDITOR

M.

MARTIN.

Present System Blamed for Social Ills Sir.,— Mr Campbell 's little o-utburst oi class hatred at Iona College the other day, when sought to convey to th# young ladies the impression that •'he present Government was engaged in the "rooting up of all things that are good," reminds one that Confucius can give us a possible solution. He has been dead quite a long time, considerably over 2000 years. but his philosophy is still quite green, partieularly this little gem, which just sparkles with brilli.ancy: "Things have their root and their completion. It cannot be that when the root is neglected what things spring from it will be well ordered. ' ' If the present state of affairs ran counter to Mr Campbell 's conception of what is right and just, then it must have sprung from just sueh a root as Confucius had in mind. and we know what wonderful gardeners the Chinese are, so the ,old philosopher must have been familiar with his subject. Perhaps Mr Campbell has not realised that it has been people who hold view*. similar to his own who have been in eharge of this root for ages past and have allowed it to grow in sueh a disorderly fashion that they can no longer control it. Now they make vague ex» cuses for their ineffic-iency and go about their crumbling fortresses trying to bolster up the courage of their dwindling bands of followers by predicting a fearful future, an era contrary to all Christian principles, and condemning an educational syistem his own class devised. Beoause order is coming out of .chaos, because the plant is assuming a more symmetrical shape, he calls it Communism. A word so very -useful to a certain type of political propagandist to-day. From Plato we get another gemt "Neither drugs nor charms, nor burn-. ings, will touch a deep-lying political sore any more than a bodily one, but only right and utter change of constitution, and they do but lose their labour who think that by any tricks of law they can get the better of thoso mischiefs of commerce and see not that they hew at a hydra." What halt M* Campbell 's system to.offer to the masses of people to-day; almost in the midst of a second Industrial Revolution, when only our antiquated system of distribution prevents ua, with very little effort^ from producing far more than we can consume! Let the efforts of science be directed towards the benefit of the "Great Carpenter's" subjects, and not toward* their destruction, as at present; if our aristocracy delight in wars, tariff walle, Slums, destruction of foodstuffs, and th* building of handsome churches and cathedrals with miserable labourers who go about with the fear of to-morrow in their hearts, if this is the way they maintain their security, little do they realise how their hand is turned against the "Master of Man" and the "King Of Kings." One does not need an, outsize in imagination to see that this so-called drift towards this state of Communisin is the result of previous misgovernment and the deliberate withholding and destruction of foodstuffs while so many of the people were in actual want. Isaiah holds out some hope; not for wealth and the erimes committed in it* name, but for those who are heavily laden and distressed. "And they shall build houses, and* inhabit them, and they shall plant vineyards and eat th* fruit of them. They shall not build and another inhabit^ they shall not plant and another eat> for as the day* of a tree are the days of my peopl* and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands'." Surely, Sir, this prophecy savours of a co-operative commonwealth where th* individual has full liberty in everything but the right to exploit his fellow-maii (a loss which at present some peopl*' bemoan).

We are definitely not drifting toward* Communism. Only Mammon can driv* a people in that direction. and Mammon has been robbed of his whip as far as New Zealand is concerned. Christianity is not on the wane, but I do thini religion is preventing it from waxing. Christ lived and died for the whole of mankind, not part of it, and when w* have passed through this irksome but necessary period of economic readjust4 ment and the fear of to-n^orrow, and individual sedfishness has been conquered, man will salute his Master in a spirit of friendliness, not fear. Remember His last words on the cross pieading for His tormentors: "Forgiv* tliem, O Lord, they know not what they do. " Mammon, seek His forgiveness ' and blanie not those whom you have trampled underfoot; they were not beasts, but just what you made of them. — Yours, ctc.,

Waipawa, Dec. 21, 1937.