“LEST WE FORGET”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 October 1938, Page 5

“LEST WE FORGET”

LESSON TAUGHT BY DAVS OF CRISIS APPEAL BY THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY PREPARATION FOR ARMISTICE DAY Sy Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. (Received This Day, 10 a.m.) LONDON, October 30. A conference representative of the Christian Church was held at Lambeth Palace, under the presidency of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who has issued the following message to the nation: —

“It would be a spiritual disaster, if, after the recent crisis, we sink back into the old habits and miss the call of God. The approaching Armistice Day brings an opportunity to pause. There must this year be a new and solemn remembrance of what God has been saying in the year’s events ’Lest we forget.’ Wrongs and cruelties have been and are being committed everywhere, which even a generation ago would have seemed unthinkable. Christian values, on which we hoped civilisation would be built, are in danger of disappearing from world. Must we not have seen plainly the judgment of God in the nearness of the recent dangers? All nations, including our own, and the whole Christian Church, have had some share in the guilt. There must be deep repentance for the past.” The message sets out three ways in which Christian standards can be recovered,- firstly, the substitution of reason, conference and conciliation for the method of violence in settlement of international disputes; secondly, statesmen should seek the regulation of armaments, in order to avert a race which surely is insane; thirdly, help must be brought to the multitudes who, by reason 6f race, conscience or religion, are bereft of home and hope. The message concludes by urging prayer with a new earnestness and width of outlook. “Let each in ence of Armistice Day resolve: ‘By God’s help I will try for His sake, and for the sake or my country and the world, to make my Christian faith more active and my witness to it clear-