The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 1919 A REALISABLE DREAM.

Taihape Daily Times, 23 January 1919, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 1919 A REALISABLE DREAM.

(With »rlucfl is tucorporateO Th* fai« hape Poet uad WratcmU-jo News).

Diplomacy is king, for ui . France, there is a diplomatic body in session that has a power and an order of reference that has not been equalled since this world was hurled off, a seething mass of molten matter, from the parent of the solar system to which it belongs. There are in the world undeniable evidences of an. engineering skill being possessed by dead civilisations which baffle the understanding of the greatest engineers in our day, but whatever triumphs prehistoric ancients achieved in the moulding of matter there are no evidences whatever that they succeeded in anything so grand in moulding mind, and so fraught with the attainment of a condition wherein genius and wealth will be entirely diverted from the destruction of human life and turned into channels leading to the very highest and holiest human conditions we in this age can have any conception of. The ancients have left examples of art and skill and. engineering science, but the present civilisation, however crude its methods, has brought together, from almost every nation, representatives of the sum total of the world's intelligence to evolve ■ laws for the peaceful government oX all nations and peoples; to secure a world-wide brotherhood of man that \ shall render military systems extinct only in so far as policing duties render them essential. The world's greatest minds have begun to suspect that they are nearer neighbours to each other than they had supposed,- that neighbourliness is not measured in miles, but by avenues of intelligence, all converging on the attainment of a condition of pennannt peace and the greatest possible good to all. A worldwide regime in which peace shall triumph and war shall have no part is at hand. Will the Peace Conference, the conclave of the world's intelligence, grasp it, or will failure thrust Humanity back again on the old hpllish arbitrament, of war, of huge guns, of flammenwerfer, poison gas, bombs-:, mines, and that unholy and inhuman campaigning of intrigue, lying, deception, cunning ad corruption? We stand too near the almighty possibilities our day to view them in their true perspective; our eye-pieces arc hopelessly incapable of focussing even a glimpse of the future of which poets have sung and great minds have depicted. Will the world again fall bac' upon military systems-that eat up the energy, intelligence and manual labour of human kind, leaving the man with not sufficient to keep him in health, making life a burden to him; ingrafting in his nature such mortal fear that he goes mad in his efforts to save himself from starvation, and thereby sows starvation broadcast amongst his fellows, or will this Conference of unprecedented status and with hitherto unheard of power and scope, banish for ever the bloodyshambles of war. turning the millions of gun-bearing parasites into peaceful avenues'of production to sow the seeds of peace and plenty? Peace is the natural state of the human race, therefore there is nothing Utopian in hoping for the exorcism of the war spirit from the policy of nations; the Peace Conference has the opportunity to lay the foundations of a structure in which the bloody jurisprudence of the sword shall be exterminated for ever, in which there shall be no national hosti- | litics. Let us not underestimate the I gravity and momentousness of the issues at stake. We can afford to view with unconcern the quibbling, guessing and vapourings of a huge army of newspaper men, gathered in Paris from all quarters of the globe, despite the fact that they seem to have got supreme control of cables by the volume of untruth and piffle that New Zealanders. are having transmitted to them. Instances can be quoted in which hungry and unreliable corres pendents arc frequently cabling quite contradictory statements. Pressmen are nobodies and they need not be allowed to obscure the real nature of that which it is rather their duty to narrate than to guess about. No judicial body or organisation ever possessed powers such as are vested Sn this great Peace Conference; it has not

the power to oreate roses without thorns or bees without sting;.?. We mean that there must ever be the extremes of those; little -iiffcrences amongst men that lead on to progress, but it has both the power and opportunity to stop bloody scenes in which one-half the people of world axe in mighty, determined conflict tryirg to exterminate the other naif; and are themselves being destroyed in the effort. The Confcrance has met under most auspicious conditions, and the speeches of President Poincare and Premier Clemenceau are a most happy augury of the great good it is hoped will follow. At present there are no details to profitably discuss.