World Peace.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 3, Issue 51, 1 March 1912, Page 14

World Peace.

"The Worker" and the Military Craze. LETTER FROM AMERICA. THE WORLD PEACE FOUNDATION. International School of leave, 29a Beacon St., Boston, January 16, 1912. Dear Sir, —I havo received and read with deep interest several of the recent issues of "The Maorilajid Worker," and I have noticed with special satisfaction tho prominent place which you give in your columns to opposing tho military craze, of which at tbe present time we are seeing such a mournful recrudescence in many quarters. lamat a loss to understand why this fever should break out in New Zealand, for if there be on© place in tho world which one would have supposed would have been immune, it is certainly New Zealand. Since it has broken out there, however, it is a satisfaction to see that a lot of you are fighting it so manfully. It is a special satisfaction to see that the working-men of- New Zoaland, whom your paper represents, aro fighting it. It is only fair to say that I have found the organised work-ing-men of the world uniformly sane, noble, and resolute upon this matter I was deeply impressed in Germany last summer, when a. lot of politicians and capitalists were working hard to stir ue sentiment against England over the Morocco question, to find that the Social-Democrats of Berlin held great meetings, sometimes numbering more than a hundred thousand men, to protest against such wickedness and folly, and to denounce militarism altogether in the strongest terms. The working men of England and Franc© have an equally noble record, and you know well the feeling of our own American working-men, the class who have to do the fighting and dying when war does come, while more privileged classes sit in their comfortable corners and read about it in the newspapers. Even the clergy, it must frankly be conceded, have often made a very sorry show in the fulfilment of their vocation as apostles of the Prince of Peace, compared with mem who are under no so pronounced obligation to lead the world m this important matter. The movement to supplant the system of war by tho system of justice as the method of settling international disputes is certainly the commanding cause of our time. It has been well snirl that as the peculiar duty of the last generation was to put a step to man-selling, tho chief duty of our generation is toput a stop to man-killing. The next generation will look back to a dot of the proceedings to-day in highly civilised communities to build up bigger armies and bigger navies with which to kill men and scare men, as a way of proving that their particular view upon some disputed point was right, with amazement and horror. I cannot but believe that tho present strange frenzy will be short-lived. If President Taft's arbitration treaties with Great Britain and Franco now before our Senate are adopted, that will prove a great step in the development of the legal method. Other such treaties will surely follow, and gradually nations will come to settle their disputes in tho courts instead of by fighting, just as individual citizens do in civilised nations. That fruition will bo the reward of such staunch workers as yourself in the struggle against the wasteful and wicked system of great armaments today.—l am, with high regard, EDWIN D. MEAD.