Talking Peace

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 25, 22 June 1905, Page 1

Talking Peace

Pius X. keeps alive the oM traditional position of the Pope as the world's peacemaker. For his fatherly interest in the cause of peace he has received the thanks of the two nations that are still locked in a deathsfruggle in the Distant East. Pope Gregory the Great was the first who rendered distinguished service to the world as arbitrator both in Italy and beyond its borders, and— as Haynes says in a recent work on political psychology—' he may be said to ha^e inaugurated the tradition of the Papacy as an international tribunal, to which Leo XIII. so proudly referred in his letter to the Queen of; Holland after the Hague Conference of 1899.'

The heavy naval and military defeats recently inflicted on Russia naturally mafce, of themseUcs, flor peace. Another and important factor towards a cessation of the titanic struggle consists in the enormous difficulty which Russia, must, experience In feeding;, o\ci a single line of rails, an army sufficient to meet the exigencies of the military situation in Eastern Asia. It has been said that an army marches and fights on its stomach. ' Mr. Dooley ' put this idea in his own quaint way some time ago. ' If,' said the philosopher of Archey Road, • all thim Great Powers (as they say thimselves) was fr to attack us (the United States) I'll tell ye what I'd do. I'd blockade Armour an' Convp'ny (the great Chicago meat packers) an* the wheat ilhators iv Miiv nysoty. F'r, Ilinnissy, I tell ye, th' hand that rocks th' scales in th' grocery store, is th' hand that rules th' wurruld.' In the days of the Crimean w.ar, Russia, so to speak, blockaded her wheat fields Export from them ceased, the price of that prime necessary of European life rose hy eighty per cent, in Great Britain, and there was hunger unappeased in many places besides the purlieus of Whitechapel. When the Northern and Southern States of America were arguing with bayonets and Minie rifle balls in the sixties, a wooden-walled steamsloop of only 10 10 tons— the ' Alabama,' to wit— stole out of Birkenhead with an English equipment and an English crew, became part of the Confederate fleet, and set to wonk raiding Federal Commerce somewhat in the! fashion of the Russian ' Dnieper,' that is now prowling about the Eastern seas. Well, even that old wash-tub warship was able to cause a decided rise in the price of wheat This gives a point to the rather disquieting opinions expressed >by Sir Samuel Baker,. Lord Charles Beresford, and others as to the grave peril that would

threaten England in the event of war with a naval Power. Su|ch considerations ought to 000 l the heads of the jingoes. And there Is thus much comfort in the contemplation of a year of scarcity : that a bad harvest in bellicose countries istregardea by military experts as the best guarantee of peace t