Manawatu Herald TUESDAY, JANUARY 28, 1918. WORLD RECONSTRUCTION.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 1932, 28 January 1919, Page 2

Manawatu Herald TUESDAY, JANUARY 28, 1918. WORLD RECONSTRUCTION.

T.IIK task of *'i-ccoii.-!ru<-linu I he or-.gani.-alion of liic world, and c.-lab-lishing a new ) >• > licy in which a League of Free Nations shall replace liu' old M'l'lcai ot the balance id' rival 1 ’ewer;-’' was discussed by Lord Northi-lilfe, in an article on the transit inn from war to peace. The. accomplishment of a ' change so gigantic a.s the adjusting of national organisations to lit into new supernational machinery must be difficult and slow, he wrote. Fortunately, the very steps necessary to make it possible are steps that will slowly make it actual. Let me select a few simple examples. The ces-alimi id. hostilities will leave the world short of food, short of transport, short of raw materials. The machinery that has. regulated these during the war will have to be kept in action beyond the war. Food will have to be rationed, transport will have to be rationed, raw material will have to be rationed. It is a world problem that mm be settled only on a world basis, and there will be every opportunity, in the years of transition, to transform those economic relations which are forced upon us by necessity into a system which will meet with free and general acceptance.- Intimately connected with these matters will ho the problem of the returned soldier, whether wounded or otherwise, the problem of pensions, the problems of wages, housing, hours and conditions of work, regulation of child labour, female labour, and so forth. The equalisation of those in different countries will he necessary to fair rationing, and from tin's necessity will arise international conferences of workers which may he able to settle some of the most diOicult questions of super-national organisation. * When the question of disarmament arises, some will demand

a fundamental necessity 'that their nation must have a large army or a large navy. Some will advocate, as an act of punishment- or of justice, (lie disarmament of other nations. In the consequent negotiations it will soon he found that to insist on an unduly large army or navy is to saddle one’s country with a huge expense; to insist on (ho disarmament of another country may he to present (hat country with a huge annual income that can he used in commercial rivalry. And so we may come- to a eondilion in which, if there he international security, there will he a contest, not as to which country shall maintain the largest navy and the largest army, hat as to which country shall most completely disarm. 1 foresee iniernationa! commissioners at work for a long time trying to establish frontiers, conditions of Parliamentary responsibility, canons ol International law, rules of international commerce, laws even of religious freedom, and a thousand other conditions of national organisation. in (lie veryact of seeking the foundation for a League of Free Nations, and in slowly building up the fabric, we shall get rid of the passions and fears of war. By the mere endeavour to lind the way'to a belter condition of the world, we shall bring this bettor condition about.