The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE FRIDAY, DECEMBER 13, 1918. THE PEACE CONFERENCE.

Taihape Daily Times, 13 December 1918, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 13, 1918. THE PEACE CONFERENCE.

(With which is ruenrpa-rated The TA!hspe Pout Lad Walmuntuo News).

Why there should be objection raised to New Zealand being represented at, and taking part in what is termed the Peace Conference is not at all plain, and no logical, or even coinnionscnse reasoning has been adduced to show why this country should hold aloof. There are men and amongst them are some legislators who have strongly expressed the view that Mr. Massey and Sir Joseph Ward, should have remained in New Zealand while the affairs of the world arc being resorted from the melting-pot. It seems that the leaders of labour have got the extraordinary notion that when we are brutally attacked by a barborous neighbour who would ravage and enslave us, leaving us mere cattle, with no political standing and without a voice in the government of our country, wo should invite their invasion, or at least just do nothing -while they take possession of us body and soul. In a survey of the animal kingdom we do not find one genus or species that will not defend itself against an enemy to the fullest of its power so to do, and even some species of the vegetable kingdom will shrink and fall back into a condition and place of safety. There is nothing in nature that we can find as a precedent for the xattitude of those men amongst us who seem to be afflicted with a sentimental kink, who wmuld unhesitatingly develop and plunge into a bloody revolutionary civil war, killing their fellow-countrymen and even their relatives and brother workmen, but who vociferously oppose any fighting against the common or national enemy that -would destroy us as a whole. We are not amongst those who judge solely by final results, regardless of the methods employed; we know that much injustice and much unnecessary pain, deprivation and suffering has boon caused by an incapable Minister being in control of the military machinery in this Dominion, and that if the “keep your hands off my officers” attitude had been replaced by a more humane intelligence, and if, while life was being freely conscripted there had been shown less despicable miserliness about the money necessary to permit justice to have tempered our dealings with our soldiers there -would have been loss chance of any serious political upheaval. To go on repeating the self-assumed title of "Win the War Government” does not give the words any magical significance and they certainly have no real significance with the majority in the country. The fact we have to face is an astoundingtendency in politics towards the doctrines of that class of extremists -who were against taking the part absolutely essential to laying the terrifying menace that had arisen against the whole British Empire, and who now, consistently with their previous actions, are urging that New Zealand should leave others to do the international reorganisation that Germany has forced upon the world. These extremists will cause social and political disruption amongst their fellows at home, demanding the last gramme and the last farthing even in a case governed by little else than fancy, but the criminal nations which have robbed,

murdered, plundered, sacked and deslated the British nation and empire, they would ask for and exact nothing. These men arc to some extent freaks inasmuch as'they can think and judge as from man to man but when it comes to nationality against nationality they hopelessly flounder. Most evenly balanced intelligences must realise that if cither an individual or a nation wilfully and unlawfully destroys anothers property, the loss must be replaced or compensated for, and wo can only regard any other system of justice as fallacious and contrary to nature. Therefore, it seems to us that this country would have proved to be little less than a nest of lunatics had it refrained from urging its two leading Ministers to accept the call of Empire to attend a conference that has no compeer or parallel in the world’s records of deliberative and adjudicative gatherings. The Allied nations are about to meet, not merely to find a basis for peace with the Central Powers, and to assess and levy the amount of damages and compensations they arc to pay, but the civil and military, the social and political, the industrial and financial affairs of the whole world are in desperate need of reorganisations; the course of civilisation is to be shaped and directed; all nations are to be rendered safe and their peoples arc to be put on the road

to working out their own destiny in their own way, in accordance with their respective national characters and peaceful aspirations. The criminal peace breakers will, in accordance with common justice, have to pay the bill of costs they have run up, and is there a man amongst us with such kinked notions of justice that will still say that New Zealand is not to have the opportunity of presenting its bill and being present to defend the righteousnss of every item therein? While the future of mankind and civilisation is being shaped should Ncw r Zealand hold aloof from, at least, having a voice? There will always be diversity of opinion in national and local politics, and at no time in the political history of the world have such opinions so alarmingly, distressingly, and threateningly differed. We are faced with the Bolshevik at one end who declares that all shall have high pay and no work, and at the other by the greed-grained profiteer who would accumulate millions over the dead bodies of his human victims. One extreme would rapidly exhaust the riches of the world, and the other corner production while the world became depopulated by famine, the result of might of money being supreme. The Peace Conference, as it is termed, rvhich this country’s political leaders are on the way to attend, is the starting point, of a new era of civilisation. Might which has prevailed as the supreme arbiter right up from the indistinguishable past is to be dethroned; the animal in mankind is to be rendered subservient to the intelligence, mentality, spiritually and the higher qualities in human nature; nations propose to league up and institute an international court which shall replace standing armies and hugely costly navies, and before which all serious national differences shall be argued and adjudicated upon; a bloodless settlement of international disputes instead of the frightful orgies of war such as the people of the world have just emerged from. This briefly, is the nature of the business of the meeting that Mr. Massey and Sir Joseph Ward have left these shores to take part in; their mission is not an important one, it is distinctly momentous and by no sane method of reasoning can any objections to their going bo rendered understandable. We wish them God Speed.