DR. FRANK CRANES DAILY EDITORIAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 25, 21 April 1927, Page 16

DR. FRANK CRANES DAILY EDITORIAL

THE END OF WAR (Copyright, 1927.) TyrORE institutions are done away with because people simply lose interest in them than for any other reason. More questions that have seemed vital to people have been settled because the world got tired of the dispute than because one side gain d ascendancy over the other. There used to be tremendous theological issues. They were not settled because one side proved the other was wrong, but the audience simply left. They walked out on the performance, and the show was over. There has been an age-old dispu to as to whether war is necessary. Some people think combat is inherent in human nature and we must fight as long as there are men. Others, on the contrary, advance most telling arguments for universal peace. There is still a third way in which war as an institution may be re!; gated to the scrap heap, and that is for people to lose interest in it. That is what is taking place now. The world was bored with the last war. Our young men went to the conflict as to a nasty piece of business that must be settled as soon as possible so they could go home. As soon as it was settled they threw down their arms, got off their uniforms, and resumed business, w-hich they found vastly more interesting. The last war was nothing but an insufferable piece of egotism. As soon as the trouble-maker was squelched, the people got down to business again. What people do not like they will soon cease to do. War at one time appealed to the adventurous minded of the race. There was no other channel equal to that for engrossing their efforts. All the superior-minded men were warriors. To-day war has ceased to occupy a place in the popular imagination. Nowadays men want another kind of power. They seek for political or monetary power over their fellows and do not care especially for fighting with them. Their combative instincts nowadays are shunted into the avenues of trade, science, and so on. It is more interesting to gain dominion over nature by steam, electricity and machinery than it is to gain dominion over your fellows by killing them. Transportation and electrical com munication now loom large in the horizon. We are subduing, training and utilising nature and natural forces instead of enslaving our fellow men. More people are interested in business to-day than in warfare. In time past it was quite the contrary. Trade and the like was for the lower order of men, and war was the sport of nobles and kings. To-day the class of nobles and kings is steadily dwindling and the number of common men increasing