CAN PEACE BE TOO DULL

Hokitika Guardian, 27 September 1930, Page 2

CAN PEACE BE TOO DULL

“The organisation of peace as a new and constructive phase of civilisation is going to be a very dour affair,” write’s Mr Wickham oteecl in “Goodwill.’ “War cannot be beaten by any mere

denunciation of its horrors, or even by recognition of its blind destructiveness. It has been a force, an expression of power, a school of discipline, oi heroism, 1 of .self-devotion, an outlet for ambition, a synthesis of desires and appetites, a supreme risk, and a call 'lot action. For countless ages it has been the chief preoccupation ot mankind. Readiness and fitness to light and to die for tribe, nation, or country have determined the scale of social honour and the very structure of society.

“War has been the (shuttle that has woven a scarlet thread into the grey tissue of human existence. Is it not presumptuous to imagine that it wiil he enough to say ‘No more war’ in order to stay the shuttle mid to offer mankind a drab, dull vestment of colourless days? To-day, the real case against war is its umvorthiness as an occupation for civilised human beings—a reductin ad absurdum of human intelligence. 1 ’ “Yet its umvorthiness will not abolish it unless peace he worthier. Peace will not triumph unless it calls for greater heroism and gives opportunities for the acceptance of higher risks, for fuller self-,sacrifice, and for nobler ambitions than mechanised, ehemicalisect, scientific warfare can now hold out, *

“T think we hgve to conceive pence as a positive phase of human development, the starting-point of a new era, not as a haven in which men can take refuge from storm and stress. Peace may entail profound changes of social structure and of economic outlook, it may alter most of our accepted mora* ‘values.’ It will certainly involve a new conception of the relationship between men and machinery in industrial production. It will be, in effect, thq beginning of a thorough revolution in our ways of thought and life. This

is why it should appeal to adventurous and progressive spirits.”