THE HOPE OF EUROPE

Hokitika Guardian, 18 March 1921, Page 3

THE HOPE OF EUROPE

LONDON, Jan. 20. Sir Philip Gibbs, in bis first article as editor of "The Review of Reviews” :

"In England there lias been a failure of leadership to guide the nation forward along the road out of the jungle-darkness fo clearing places of light and health. The Government is out of touch with the mass of its people, unrepresentative of its best hopes, violating its noblest instincts by ignoble action. It has ignored the one strong craving of the people—which is peace. That is the thing they want first of all. Peace ill the Near East, and the Par East, where there is war. Peace at home, where there are all the elements of strife, more menacing as the months pass. . . In spite of all blackness I see light ahead, or think I do. In this past year there have been the faint stirrings, at least, of a world conscience which presently may lead to notion, changing the whole aspect of the scene. Beneath all the hard rimt of materialism and cynicism which have Europe in their grip at the moment, there has been, as far as I can trust mv own observaitem, a welling-up nl generous, ardent, idealism which pre-

seutlv and very soon, I think, will break through the crust ami prevail.

. . 1 have met men and women of all classes who are inspired hv a desperate will to break the old spell of evil which now prevails, and to establish a new order of things, which shall fulfil in some' degree the hopes and ideals which came to them in the agony of war —the destruction of militarism, the security of common folk, a closer fellowship among civilised peoples, a resistance to the old men who made the war, and a cleaner system of social life, within and across the frontiers of nations. I have found amongst these people a consciousness that the old gospel of force must give way to new ideas, and that Europe can only he saved by a reconciliation of nations, exchanging their resources of wealth and labour, helping each other out of the

ditches of despair, wiping out war debts, and abolishing the old barricades of commercial rivalry. This 1 am eon-

vinced is the faith of great numbers of people in every country of Europe, thwarted for the time being by the dead-heads—the men with the old ideas, who still have their hold upon the machinery of government -but not always to he thwarted. As a distinguished Ereneliman lias said to me, "The dead-heads cannot live for ever. Soon they must die and thru youth will prevail.” The world waits lor the coming of youth—the non men with the new ideas horn out of the convulsions of war. It waits for its new leaders. At the present time they have not come forward. There is no sign from them. Rut surely below the surface of the old order of things, the new spirit is quickening and will produce its men. 11 not, then, again, we are doomed. Perhaps they will not appear in the year that is coming, not before more tragic happenings have scared us, hut nothing, in my belief, can check the triumphant assertion of a new leadership which will presently take up the control in all European nations and work for the ideas of peace and fellowship beyond national boundaries. For that is the only hope of Europe, and there are many who know it. We must have this new leadership. It is necessary in England, as elsewhere.”