THE CONQUEST OF WAR.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 3888, 27 December 1928, Page 3

THE CONQUEST OF WAR.

Speaking of the Kellogg Pact at the tenth anniversary meeting of the League of Nations Union Mr. Baldwin said: —“The conception is so vast that I doubt if people yet have realised the full import of it. It means nothing less than this: That every man and woman in every civilised country of the world must work without ceasing to bring the common conscience of mankind up to the level demanded by the obligations of that treaty. War is the oldest industry in the world. It has been fought for plunder, power, religion, honour — and for peace. Very naturally at the conclusion of the war there was a desire and a longing for peace and perpetual peace. But desire, though it is a good thing, is not everything. You want the will to peace and to permanent peace; not only the machinery, hut the heart and mind and soul. It is to further that desire, to will it that the League of Nations was established, that the Locarno Treaties were, signed, and that the Kellogg Pact was signed. 'That pact means that we are trying to regulate and govern primeval instincts which are older than the nations who are trying themselves to govern them; it means that we are trying to change the whole current of political history; it means that we are trying to find some moral equivalent to war. It is a hard road and a steep path, but that is all the more reason why we should brace our will and gird our lions for the task before us. We must neglect nothing which will make us |more fit for this ascent; the controlling of our passions , and, what is perhaps more difficult, the curbing of our own tongues. 'But we are making headway. . . . The League of Na-

tions has ia great future before it, It has to fight scepticism. Scepticism in its place, for the examination of questions, is a very good thing. But when you have a task before you such as we have we want move than scepticism; we want faith. Faith alone can remove mountains. Faith alone can see the gaol that lies before it, and in faith alone can we carry on the drudgery of the day-to-daj work amid the din and dust and turmoil of this world’s affairs; and buoyed up alone by faith we hope that in time we, or those who comes after ns, will • one day plant our feet firmly in the ever-lasting paths of peace.”