IT IS NOT WAR

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 175, 17 March 1932, Page 6

IT IS NOT WAR

our refinements DUM-DUM BULLETS BARRED BUT OTHERS STILL KILL. OUR COMIC LEAGUE. ' The delegates at Geneva — between alarmist cluckings at Japan's attempt to teach her elders how to /suck China eggs — registered appropriata horror at the reported use of dum-dunx bullets in civilised warfare. How stupid of the users, writes H. J. Cantwell in the Sydney Sun. These crude projectiles are inelegant in flight, clumsy on contact, and ineredibly barbarous in their effect. As pacifist zealots with a proper regard for clean carnage, we mtich prefer the little nickel-cased messengers of goodwill, so popular with the more advanced nations. They burst, not on striking the flesh, but only after deep penetration, leaving the customer so altered that his own mother wouldn't kxxow him. The.dum-dum, mushrooming-an arm or leg off, kills too quiekly to be instructive. Its glistening fellow on which peace pacts are erected and woi'lds made safe for reparations is infinitely more subtle. Its effects are repetitive, recurrent, and retrospective. It hits not only the soldier at whom it is fired, but posterity as well. Mal-a-Prop. It reappears in after-life as an old friend — gangrenous old friend. Its owner may have, in the interim, taken unto himself a wife and begotten a brood. Them, too, it destroys by snatching 'from them for periodic reconditioning, their mainstay and domestic prop. A bullet, gentlemen, to delight the heart of scientists and medicine men, -of clerics and poets — of all who yearn for Pex*manence, for The Things that Endure! Like the pooi*, it is always with us, who have been the recipients of its bounty. Similarly with gases. Some there are which kill at a breath, The wretch who sniffs them has died before he can properly appreciate their developmental possibilities, their infinite res'ource. Most wonderful are those which collapse the lungs ten years after taking. These represent the triumph of the chemist's art. One swallow makes a summer's coughing for the consumer. But such humanitarian aids are not for your fanatical Oriental, who insists upon dying in a blood-stainecl fashion, abhorrent to Western ideals. Hence the need for Disarmament Conferences and their praiseworthy efforts to substitute science for the sordid in wai*. The White Man's burden, which we must continue to bear, lest civilisation crumble. Time, Gentlemen. We have tried to teach these heathen to die like gentlemen, and not like flies — awkwardly and ineptly. But in the heat of battle they are apt to revert to the pxdmitive and do things to one another that are positively unsporting. We have shortened the howitzer barrel so as to keep the killer at a more merciful distance from his prey, and would further shorten it but for the fear of hurting its crew by a back-fire. We even considered prohibiting the use of submarines and would have done so had we not learned of their usefulness in reducing unemployment. Incendiary bombs we intended to have placed on the index, but for the discovery of a non-inflammable building material, whose inventors, we found, were legally entitled to their royalties. . We decided, wisely, we think, that private entei*pi*ise should be left free to work out our destiny. In minor things, of course, these Easterners are following our precept and example, for which we, as devout Chi'istians, ai*e duly thankful. We have lived to see tlxe ci*uel scythe, the vicious headman's sword, the loathsome spear, and the poisoned arrow out-moded by the labour saving trench-mortar, the friendly ma-chine-gun, the sleek tank, the graceful armoured car, and tlie deliciously stream'-lined aerial bomh. Who knows what othei* blessings the West nr'ght confer upon the East, if the East should pi*ove worthy!