THE WORLD OUTSIDE AND? OURSELVES.

Auckland Star, Volume LI, Issue 36, 11 February 1920, Page 7

THE WORLD OUTSIDE AND? OURSELVES.

JTo tiie Editor.) Sir, —We are suiTering from the neoes- ' sary aftermath of war—a lethargic conscience. Slogans of the war have lost) . their power to move us, partly beease ' we know now that they were often er- ' tificial, and were sounded by politicians . who had an object in view. So we i were invited to die for a great cause, which at the outset was indeed groat, . but later became obscured by minor issne3. The happenings of tbo world outside, more particularly the report of the Director of Relief Measures in Central Europe, who states that to grand one of the main streets of Vienna blocked daily with heareeß, nise tenths of them carrying the bodies of children, that tuberculosis is rapidly esteiaisv.iting. the starving Serbians, esjrecially the children; and that Central Earopu generally is on the verge of crumbling into chaos, have so much effect on us that 35,000 people attended tbe firefc day's racing at Ellerslie, and invested £125,000 in the totalisator. A nation expreeees itself by its actions. Eacfng is our national sport and an excellent sport it is, but these figures eeem to indicate that so far as the miseries o£ Europe are concerned we are taking the line of least resistance and ignoring them; ignoring also the struggle- of Ufa forces in. Europe, forces which must ultimately react on us; we are imitating the cow who chews complacently the cud of the past and ruminates on nothing at all. We are taking refuge from such, mental disturbances as the contemplation of childish corpses in Vienna. T3iere are co many refuges for the mind. whdeh does not wifih to consider the unpleasant. Pleasures and the pursuit o£ pleasure is one, and the most deadening; religion, strange to say, is another, and, like Zola, J'accuse. I accuse its devotees of practising an ideal so liigtt that it should lead to instant action, to ready and utter sacrifice, and yet of being content to live in a dim twilight of ideals, a twilight further obscured by the fog of speculative doubt, resolutely thrusting out of their minds such a spectacle as that of Serbia dying of tuhcrculosis and starvation. And our women. Are they solely immersed in tiie changing shadow-shapes of fashion and are their minds like a sea of glue; impervious to such outside impressions as the present state of Europe? There •ire surely still amongst us individuals, men and women, inspired by the divine lunacy of Don Quixote, ready to go anyi where, to do anything, if only it be 'for the betterment of the world. So many nations need our help, and Serbia, of which I can speak from intimate knowledge of its people, needs help more than most. Serbia is not a case for individual help; it needs a unit sent by j one iree nation to euccour another How (then to set in motion the machinery that actuates mass expression—the maea expression of Xew Zealand? We have for years lived under the compelling urge of a great cause; a cause that found its logical expression in war. Now for the .humanities. A simple argument I such ju, the mere statement of feet .should suffice to send us to the aid of these sorely stricken people. There ta another, though a lower ar-um nt \V« HeTe S3 tWSe Pe ° Ple if "™* be 8 GJKMYRKY W. A. XORTOX Late Administrator Serbian Relic: in Corsica.