PEACE MOVEMENT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 July 1938, Page 7

PEACE MOVEMENT

RESTORING LAW AND MERCY. The Peace movement must demand that democratic governments should more actively proclaim their esteem for mercy, human kindliness, liberty and League principles, writes Lord Allen of Hurtwood in the Peace Year Book for 1938. In order to prove the integrity of this crusade for righteousness as the means of enthroning law and mercy in a disorderly world, it is, of course, imperative that we should outline with unremitting effort the new and just Peace Settlement we desire to promote. We must, as a British Commonwealth, indicate what we would put into the common pool, and what economic and other privileges we are willing to surrender. It is worth remembering that great changes will probably occur during the next 20 years in the countries where artificial dictatorships momentarily exist. Their regimes may prove to be ships that pass in the night. All the more reason, therefore, that we should meantime rekindle faith in democratic and merciful conduct in the art of government. This dual enterprise of promoting a just peace and proclaiming righteousness —made, as it should be, without in any way surrendering the determination to protect law—could bring back into the life and message of the peace movement that religious quality which we have been in some danger of losing during the legalistic phase of the last few years.