TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Waikato Times, Volume 121, Issue 20258, 29 July 1937, Page 8

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

The Question of Peace. “ The real trouble with our age is a simple but deep-seated one,” says Mr John Martin in his book on Peace. “It is surely that men and women arc so occupied with affairs that they scarcely ever find time to do any serious reflection. At the same time in no age has thought been of more consequence as much to the man in the street as to the leader; for the elementary reason that in no age has change been more frequent and various, and hence by a kind of law ot! political gravitation more rapid with the passage of time. So il is that those of us who believe that this question of Peace is fundamental to the establishment of any true world order, must revert insistently to that elementary question. ‘What are all these armaments for?’ To that question, as everyone very well knows, there can only be one answer: ‘To make war/ “You mnv qualify it if you like by adding that they are alternatively the chief instrument in a game of bluff and blackmail of which war is the ultimate sanction. The qualification makes little difference to the short answer. If anything, it gives it, an added significance. But immediately you begin, as the average politician in!^ 1 too busy to think—-invariably does, to argue with an elaborate display of virtue that they arc merely defence against some wicked aggressor, you beg and befog the whole question,”