FORCE CONDEMNED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 December 1941, Page 5

FORCE CONDEMNED

BROADCAST BY THE POPE FIVE-POINT PLAN FOR NEW INTERNATIONAL ORDER. CONDITIONS OF JUST PEACE. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, December 24. ■ Condemning the idea, of force, tlie Pope in a broadcast from the Vatican City declares that men of courage, vision and conscience were needed to reconstruct the world. All the values of civilisation were endangered.

“Men have turned from Christ and their souls are without faith,” he said. “War has devastated vast countries and millions of people are suffering great pain and sorrow. Harsh violence rages throughout the world like a storrp. Mankind is rebelling against the message of Christianity.

“Let us look for the root of the evil. We cannot close our eyes to the progressive dechristianisation of life and mankind’s abuse of science and power. Mankind has turned to the material world instead of the spiritual. There is an unbridled impulse toward expansion of the idea that force creates right. The atheist and anti-Christian idea of the State is spreading its tentacles in some countries and instruments of destruction are being made which are undoing the Church’s good, work.

“This is not the first time that people have been involved in a fight for something which they thought would be a new and better order and for which people have been thrown into misery. There can be no new order without freedom and equality of rights for all people, including those of small nations. There can be no place for oppression. There must be just control of raw materials so that no nation suffers unfairly. There is no place for centres of military force capable of threatening the rest of humanity. There must be progressive limitation of armaments with true respect for treaties.

His Holiness advanced the following five-point plan for a new international order to assure a just and lasting peace:—

“First, in the new order based on moral principles, there will be no place for the annexation of other people’s liberties and integrity, whatever their territorial aspirations and capacity to defend themselves. If great nations with great possibilities and power form a pool for the constitution of economic groups between themselves and smaller weaker nations, they can adequately contribute to the general material and spiritual wellbeing. “Secondly, there is no place for the suppression, either open or underhand, of the cultural values of minorities.

“Thirdly, there is no place for selfish schemes tending to reserve to oneself economic resources and materials intended for the common use of all. There must be access to the fruits of the earth. “Fourthly, there is no place for total war or an unchecked race for armaments so that for a third time calamity should overwhelm the people. Juridical relations between the nations must be respected. To guarantee these relations there must arise institutions

capable of securing respect for treaties. “Fifthly, there is no place for the persecution of religion and the church because faith is one of the rights of man,”