PREVENTION NOW

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 286, 15 December 1944, Page 7

PREVENTION NOW

Sir,-Your editorial describing the arrival of the Polish refugee children ends with the query whether each and all of us are doing our best to prevent the recurrence of similar catastrophes in the future. Only a Nazi-hearted minority in our community can regard war as a necessary phase of the evolutionary progress and therefore as inevitable and unpreventable. But the wouldbe peace-making majority have no idea where to begin the task of re-making the world, Our educational leaders have,

however, had the wisdom to call an education conference, where the thoughtful and earnest put forward suggestions about the future education of our children. I had no share in these discussions, but there is always a danger of the people involved losing sight of the wood among so many trees. Certainly we must not be sentimentalists like E.W.W., but if we are not kind soon enough someone has "to be cruel to be kind." Hitler would say that this time it had to be himself, Adolf Hitler! A generation which had built its house on the sand has certainly shared his nervous-break-down and has to find the road back to health and stability. Surely the fundamental cause of war is the selfishness that comes of ignorance and misunderstanding? If so, surely it is the chief purpose of any scheme of education in any country to teach people to understand other people. Not even indirectly can this be the result of schemes of education which accentuate caste and raise barriers which teach the fellowcitizens of a country to misunderstand one another. Such has been. the effect of public school education in England, and our own private schools may be similarly damaging to the spirit of community. How can we expect to establish right relations with other nations if we do not make right relations one with another a first principle? Do we fear that by understanding too much we may forgive too much and lose our individual quality? There would be no danger of any such effect if our values were really Christian, and wise means employed as they could be, first in the home country, and then by the interchange of workers, student; and teachers with other nations, so that international understanding may be achieved. This is not an airy ideal, but a stern and crying necessity. It may be our own children orphaned and homeless in the next war. We are a small country, but we could be a missionary country. Without forgetting our faults or being unduly self-righteous we have achieved, by purely democratic methods, a high standard of social equality and justice, Being all of a type, mutual understanding is relatively easy here. Could we not more consciously and universally pursue the ideal of the familial state? This is a question for the women’s societies, and I would like to see it taken up and

debated by them

MOTHER

(Christ-

church).