HUMAN STOCKTAKING.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 January 1940, Page 4

HUMAN STOCKTAKING.

Ji] VERY now and then our railway authorities hold a sale ol forgotten goods, articles left behind by forgetful, tratelleis. “Forgotten Goods”—the phrase is a suggestive one. Iluinan minds should occasionally count over their own lorgotten goods, and in so doing they will discover more than they often realise to balance their unforgotten ills. What more appropriate season for a stocktaking of this kind than the New Year.’ Not many can truthfully say that the past has held nothing but disappointments. As Clough so tersely puts it: If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars — A reflection which has logic to recommend it as well as neatness of phrasing. This business of looking forward and musing on future endeavour is mainly, of course, for the young, yet the young of today have been born into a. harder, sterner world than that which their parents first knew, and a legacy ol danger appears to await their advance. How much has the generation which has grown up since the Great War learned from Unit conflict? In many lands, particularly in Germany and Russia, it must he confessed, nothing whatever. Obviously it is inexperienced youth which is the main support ol more than one most menacing dictatorship. What hopes can such communities be said to cherish other than of violence and domination? Against the current of forces such as these the aim and the means of collective security seems al limes all 100 frail. All the stronger then, should be the determination of those who perceive no other alternative to stand last by the piiiiciples which have for their object the preservation of mankind from the terrible consequences of those dictatorships which have, plunged the world into war. For over four years in the period 1914-18 groat nations ol the world devoted the whole of their energies to sheerly destructive ends, and the criminal policy of Hitler has brought about a repetition of what promises Io be another world tragedy. In the Great War period progress and useful productivity virtually ceased. Money beyond reckoning was shot into the air and wasted —at the third battle of Ypres alone the British fired over four million shells costing ;£22,()()0,()00 as a preliminary bombardment, before even the battle opened. And the terrible tragedy was that a host of young men in whose hands the future lay were killed or mutilated beyond repair. In order to preserve democracy Britain again has been compelled to fake up arms, and she will not lay them down until her task has been accomplished and Ihe peoples of freedomloving countries are able again to go about their peaceful vocations without the continual fear that some madman in Europe may throw the world into war again,