WILL THERE BE ANOTHER WARP

Hokitika Guardian, 13 May 1920, Page 1

WILL THERE BE ANOTHER WARP

HOW* TO PREVENT IT,

(By Robert Blatchford in the ‘Sunday Chronicle.’) I have just read lan Hay’s article oil American Anglopho'bism in the ‘Daily Sketch.’ The writer gives us several reasons why Americans dislike or distrust Britain. For one thing, they are suspicious of bur naval power for .another they believe the League of Nations is a British trick to overreach America, and also they are angry because we have not been sufficiently enthusiastic over their share in the war. And lan Hay tells us:-“We can never hope to got one' another’s point of view—the Atlantic is too broad—but we can agree to respect that point of view, and we can trust each otbor.” I agree that we cannot hope to get each other’s point of view, and I think it is a waste of time to plead for universal ’international brotherhood. We have never got brotherhood amongst our own people, nor has any other nation; but we do not allow our personal antipathies and prejudices to drive us to incendiarism and murder. Is it too much to ask that the nations shall mutually resolve that international jealousies and. misunderstandings shall not plunge the world into war? *»'**»**

War is the great curse, and we must try to abolish it. How ? I think the first step should be. the education of the whole world in the knowledge of what war will mean under modern scientific conditions. And the next step should he the full public discussion of all causes of friction, 'or suspicion, or misunderstanding amongst the nations. When we realise what a horrible crime war is, and when we find out bow stupid and bow mean are the hones of international contention, we •hall have made a practical advance,towards the banishment of the appeal to murder.

We must not allow our .own archaic mentality to 1)1 ind or deceive ns. We shall have to overhaul our idea of personal success and national greatness. If we persist in the outworn creeds of archaic, economists and statesmen, our own science, capable as it is of almost God-like beneficence, will blast is into ruin.

There may be, and probably will bo for ages, points of ethics, matters of taste, 1 or tradition, or sentiment upon which America and Britain, or America and Japan, or even France and Britain will disagree; but are we ready to prove ourselves such monsters of pride and savagery as to devote our intellect and on manhood and our wealth to shattering each other’s cites and slaying each other’s women and children by millions and millions like poisoned rats in a hole. P Upton Sinclair-, in his latest .book, says that the American people, speak 43 languages. How can be expect to get their point of view, or how can they get ours? But these people, like our own, are- a mixed race drawn from -the same'racial founts in differing proportions. They are all human. Will the French or the British contemplate the destruction of the little children or the helpless women of any of these races by mustard gas fogs or liquid liie. ‘ * * " * * * * *

I sec the world’s war debt estimated at 40,000 millions. Wlmt lias the world ■rot for the money ? What has the world gained by the sacrifice of some 20 millions of young lives? And that last war. costlv and terrible as it was, wilL lie eclipsed bv the horror of t)ie next. Could we but rid ourselves of the danger of war the face of the earth would be changed, and the divisions between nations would be robbed of nearly all their bitterness and all their peril. When Kipling was in America antiBritish orators threw at him jibes about brutal England “with her clmm of fortresses across the world.” That chain of fortresses is our safeguard against war. Abolish war, and >ve no longer need fortresses. Abolish war, antf the one insoluble difficulty between us and Ireland will disappear. We must beware of those people of archaic mentality. We must not thrust' them ; they do not understand. We must combine to let light in upon the brooding danger of the time. We must put before the peoples of all nations the plain questions: “Do you realise what future wars will involve, and do you realise how chimerical are the ideas for which .such wars will be waged? America is incensed, not unnaturally, at the League of Nations’ proposal that she is to have one vote and the British Empire six. We do not want a lot of entangling machinery an,:l red tape. The first idea and the essential idea is that all the nations should agree that there shall be no more- war. When that agreement is ratified universal and complete disarmament will follow. Yes, there are difficulties to be overcome. There are criminal nations, like Turkey; predatory nations, like, Germany, and inebiiatecl nations, like Russia.. But those obstacles are not insuperable, and it is tho duty of the peoples to see that the League of Nations deals with them.

j do not believe, I cannot believe, that the people of any civilised nation, when they learn what future wars will mean, will tolerate such wicked and senseless ferocity any longer. That is what I mean when I speak of a journalist’s responsibility to mankind. It is my duty to find and to lay before our readers the revelations and the warnings of men like Professor Soddy, and to bring homo to them the awful dangers into which the men of archaic mentality may blindly lead them. Read- , ers may say, perhaps, that I have told them a lot of this before. The importance of the issue must serve as my apology. This i£ the most urgent question for all mankind. Professor Soddy pleads earnestly for national training in science, and he is right. An education without science is no education at all; it is merely a kind of decorative pedan-

try. Science is systematised knowledge. To exclude science is to slam the door in the face or truth. Knowledge and truth tend, as the professor shows, to draw men and nations together, ltrofessor Soddy says: *

The Oriental mind, as the Japanese and Hindoo students of science have shown, meet on common ground with the American and European mind in the* pursuit of natural science. Science is the only aspect of truth that is universal and independent of the barriers that divide East from West and people of one religion from those of another. I ask again: Is science to be used to create wealth or to destroy it? Is science to bring us peace and happiness, or war and death? Are we going to sit tamely still and .* permit the men of archaic mentality to pervert the genius of our men of science to the service of violenco and murder? No. Let us determine to stand together, and declare to the peoples of the earth that there shall be no more war