ROOT CAUSES OF WAR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 December 1939, Page 2

ROOT CAUSES OF WAR

I SAVING NATIONAL FACE. I Men differ about the root causes of war, writes Viscount Rothermere in his book, “My Campaign for Hungary.” Belloc and his school say that fundamentally al] wars are religious. Marx and his disciples declare that fundamentally all wars are economic. I have often thought that not religion and not materialism is the fecund father of war—but the fetish of “prestige.” In the Western world we are apt to laugh at the Orientals for their extreme anxiety about “face" and “saving face." But our own pernickety anxiety about national prestige is in no way different. I would not be misunderstood. National prestige of the right kind is something for which men should always be ready to tight and suffer. It would be better for Britain to perish utterly in Ihe flames and fury of a last terrible Armageddon than for Britons to exist miserably as helots. But false “prestige" is the enemy. There is io loss of true prestige in admitting error and making amends. There is no loss of true prestige in I making the first approach. There is | certainly' no less of true prestige in re-j cognising facts.