WORLD WITHOUT WAR

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20955, 7 November 1939, Page 3

WORLD WITHOUT WAR

A PRESSING NEED HOPE OF MORAL REARMAMENT From the blood that steeped the fields of Flanders blossomed the hope of a generation of young men revolted by the senseless slaughter of the war. Of the 66,000,000 men under armes, 11,000,000 gave their lives, writes Reginald Holme, in the Bristol Evening Post. The other 55,000,000 came back to a wave of optimism and excitement. There seemed, through the League of Nations ideas, hope of building a new world from which war would be banished. But now they have been disillusioned. Many of we young Englishmen settled into peacetime slumber in the seemingly secure days of 1920-30, in which the British Empire appeared as supreme as ever and we young Englishmen were being educater for the battle of life. There were no wars in sight then, apart from wars in the family, and life seemed rather dull. It was hardly “done” for gentlemen’s sons to take part in revolutions in Central America or elsewhere. Empire building had all i been achieved, while modem exploration required scientific brains more than buccaneer spirit and bravado. Life from schooldays onward would run in the grove of a commercial or Civil Service job. A four-point programme—nice house, nice wife, nice job, nice grove —about rounded off the horizon. With millions of other young men living in some degree similarly egocentric lives, is i' a wonder that we have had little clear contribution to make to the nation? Common Sense Philosophy In the midst of this confusion I suddenly came across some modern young men with a common-sense philosophy. “If the world is in a mess it is because people were like us,” they said. Every year from 1930-1938, and each month and day recently have shown the pressing need for this moral rearmament. Moral rearmament comes first, and the spreading of it is the highest and most essential form of national service. What’s the good of carving out careers, fortunes, homes, if war is going to blow them sky high? It’s just “feathering one’s nest in a tottering tree.” And what’s the good of wars in which millions of young men kill each other in mechanised battle and murder each other’s loved ones behind the lines—wars which sesttle nothing and leave both sides ruined and a prey to revolutions and bitterness later? Is there a way to stop them?