THE NEXT WAR.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 2597, 23 June 1923, Page 3

THE NEXT WAR.

II was Belgium which, in days gone by, earned the name of the “Cockpit of Europe.” In this year of grace it seems as if the whole continent was a cockpit, for alarms and strife have become almost the normal condition in every European country, and the country which has them not appears by comparison, to be abnormal. And, though we do not hear much of it on this side of the world, every one of them is preparing for further fighting. Mr Shaw Desmond, the British lecturer. who recently toured the U.R.A., bus been telling the Americans how lucky they are to be out of it. “Europe,” be said to an interviewer, “is an armed camp. They are at work night and day in almost every country in Europe, preparing for another war. Civilisation is seriously menaced. The next war will be a more or less passionless one in which deadly gases and dirigibles will play a prominent part.” Mr Desmond told bis audiences that the only hope for the world lay in the U.R.A., tint- that the States must stay out of Europe and not become entangled with its affairs. This may be true, but how the States are to mend the European situation by refraining from touching it lie did not explain. All the same, (he picture he draws is not so very far wrong so far as the Continent is concerned.