THE PRICE OF PEACE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 202, 7 May 1943, Page 4

THE PRICE OF PEACE

We Cannot Have It Unless We Work For Justice’

* Says *

Professor

G. V.

PORTUS

of

Adelaide University, who gave this talk for the Australian Broadcasting Commission

UPPOSE a majority of you can remember that day more than 24 years ago when we learned almost suddenly, that the war had ended and we had won. I happened to be in Sydney when that spontaneous manifestation of joy and relief occurred; when shop girls left their counters unattended and climbed on passing lorries; when clerks threw down their pens and rushed coatless and hatless into the street; when no one paid fares on trams and no one seemed to care; when parsons rang their own church bells; and traffic cops actually smiled at breaches of the law. The whole thing was all the more impressive because it was so spontaneous. Later on in the evening, the crowds still thronged the streets, but the spontaneity was lessening. Some smart Alick had cashed -in on the national emotion, and sent out kerbstone merchants to sell us flags to wave. If you had asked 10 people why they behaved as they did in the morning, nine would probably have said, "because it’s all over." If you had asked 10 people that. question at night, nine would probably have said, "because we have won." I did not hear anyone that day or night talking about peace. But Where Was Peace? That’s not surprising. The common joy of November, 1918 was because of relief and victory. We of this generation have not known a peace that did not bring victory with it for us. The point, however, is that we got a peace after the last war, but did we get peace? Imagine a historian writing about the 20th century in the year 2018 A.D. He would point out that there was an almost immediate resumption of war after 1918. Poland invaded and fought Russia. Turkey and Greece fought each other in the Middle East, and nearly brought Britain into the fight. In North Africa, France fuught the Riffs, and Spain fought the Moors. Then Japan raped Manchuria, and Italy raped Abyssinia. Russia, Germany and Italy had a triai run for the big

event by taking sides in the civil war in Spain. Then, after preliminaries in Austria, Czecho-Slovakia and Poland the curtain rolled up on World War Number II. In the light of this record, you can hardly call the years between 1918 and 1939 an interval of peace, although the sentimentalists told us it was. Essentially a Negative Thing I want to suggest to you that we shall never get peace if we seek no more than peace. For what is peace? Isn’t is essentially a negative thing? Look up your dictionaries and you'll find that nearly always they give you something like this. "PEACE; freedom from war; not being at strife; a cessation from tumult; not speaking; silence." A good many people in this age are slowly learning that you can’t get a good time by setting out to have a good time, You can get a good time by setting out after something else-a game of tennis, an evening’s dancing, watching a ballet, reading a book. Peace is like pleasure. It is a byproduct of something else. Thomas A Kempis knew this five centuries ago when he wrote: "All men desire peace, but very few of them desire the things that make for peace." Jesus knew it when, at the end of His ministry, He wept over Jerusalem: "If thou hadst known, even now, the things that belong to thy peace’; and He meant the things without which peace is impossible. When Justice Reigns If peace is a by-product of something else, or what is it a by-product? It seems to. me to be a by-product of justice. Peace is something that comes to us and to the world when we behave justly to each other. A family is at peace when its members behave justly to each other. A nation is at peace when all) its citizens can feel they are being justly treated. The world will be at

peace when justice reigns in interes national relationships. Every peace society that sets out to achieve peace, sooner or later finds that peace is really an accompaniment of something else. It finds it has to begin campaigning for some _ international organisation whose task it will be to ensure equity and fair play between peoples. Mankind has long recognised that it is desperately hard, if. not impossible, for anyone to be a just judge in his own cause. We can always fihd plenty of arguments for ourselves, but we seldom look at, much less look for, the arguments on the other side, After this war has finished, there will still be statesmen backing their arguments with appeals to patriotism and threats of force. There will ‘still be economists backing their arguments with appeals to profit and threats of starvation. There will still be capitalists backing their arguments with appeals to order and threats of bankruptcy. There will still be working class parties backing their arguments with ,appeals to class hatred and threats of revolution, Each will convince himself that his argument is equitable and his threat justified. None will think it his duty to try and put himself in the other man’s place. We shall hear again the hoary old claim that if we want justice we must be stronger than anyone who is likely to challenge our rights. This, of course, is a flat denial of justice. It merely puts our rights, whatever they may be, as the end to be aimed at, and totally neglects any consideration at all of any other rights than ours. If some lawyer were to make a claim based on this principle in one of our courts of law, the presiding judge would conclude that he was the victim of some strange psychological abnormality. But in our relations to the outside world, this is unfortunately an entirely normal state of mind. We see questions which concern two or more parties in terms of one party only. Such a frame of mind cannot possibly arrive at just settlements. And where there is no justice there will be no peace. : Justice Is Not Static The other thing I want to say about justice is that it is not static. Things that are just for one generation become unjust for future generations. Thus we gradually came to the conclusion during the 19th century that it was unjust for a married man to have complete control of his wife’s property; although this was a state of things of which both Church and State in the feudal ages entirely approved. Having gone this far, we came to the conclusion that women as persons, ought to have votes. Eventually, we gave them votes. Now they enter the professions, they have even become soldiers, and with our complete approval. Thus our ideas of justice will always change. Society in its long journey from barbarism slowly climbs some mountain peak to achieve justice; and lo! there is spread out before its eyes a new panorama of further peaks to be scaled ere (Continued on next page)

(Continued from previous page) justice can be achieved. And beyond them there will be still further peaks. Justice is never static. The Real Task Here, then, is the real task for all people who call themselves pacifists. Peace will not come to them merely by striving after peace. It will supervene on the establishment of justice in international relations. And justice can only be attained by constant work, work which will itself re-create justice every day. A stern task, and we shall have to begin with ourselves; begin to check ungenerous judgments, presumptuous claims, the urges towards self-assertion, and arrogance and passion-those hateful growths of isolation. On the other hand, we shall have to turn to the outside world with seeing eyes, trying to understand the needs, the feelings, the traditional aspirations of other countries. Trying to understand above all, that the people of those other countries are men and women like ourselves; that they eat and drink; that they work and grow tired and want to rest; that they play and sing and dance and fall in love, even as we do. Then only shall we make those allowances for them that will enable us to judge them justly. Then only, with the consummation of justice, shall peace supervene on the earth. For justice is the price of peace.