THE CAUSE OF PEACE

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 78, 2 April 1928, Page 7

THE CAUSE OF PEACE

Human Race Not Properly

Civilised.

INTERNATIONAL AMITY URGED

LONDON, April 1

The well-known scientist, Sir Oliver Lodge, kept an audience of university men, representative of all England, almost spellbound in a lecture at Oxford. He declared that the human race is only in its infancy and not yet properly civilised. "We know barely anything," he said. "The fact is we are just beginning to scrape the ground in our endeavour to advance, and we are making many mistakes.

"Those who are depressed by the immediate outlook should realise that it is natural that the race in its infancy should behave badly by starting wars and trying to destroy each other."

Sir Oliver urged the cultivation of a spirit of international amity and quoted the following extract from a schoolboy's essay on war: "In modern times war is, not to see the enemy, but to fire off rifles all day, and sometimes to get hit. Then in the evening you buy a newspaper to find out who has been beaten." Dropping bombs on everybody and having submarines crawling ab6ut and sinking fishing boats, were no occupations for gentlemen, said Sir Oliver.