"A SILLY BUSINESS."

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 40, 16 February 1929, Page 12

"A SILLY BUSINESS."

WAR BETWEEN NATIONS. GREAT STATESMEN AGREED NEW .SPIRIT MANIFEST.

(By Telegraiih.—Own Correspondent/)

WHANGAREI, this day

"Although the army did its work during the Great War, we pray fervently that never again will the army go to war. There was a time when a man

could carry his audience with him by extolling -war, while a man who discredited it was deemed as being tenderfooted, but to-day every one of the greatest soldiers and statesmen are saying that war is a. silly business. So it is."

These sentiments were expressed last evening by Mr. J. H. Luxford, S.M., when he w:ts unexpectedly called upon to respond ~o the toast of the Army at the Empire Ex-Service Association's reunion and dinner.

"There may come a time." continued Mr. Lux ford, when we may have to face this silly business, and I am sure that the spirit which animated the Empire in the last will animate it again, but a change is coming, a new spirit is making itself manifest. Belief is growing among nations that they should settle their disputes by other means than war. It may take a decade, it may take generations; hut let us hope that Rpirit will grow, so that the people of the world may live freed from the fear and sorrow which war in the futdrc would be." (Loud applause.) At another stage of the proceedings, when proposing "Prosperity to the Association," the Mayor said that the greatest the association was doing was in disseminating the idea that "there should be no more war. It was surely more sensible that nations should settle their disputes by reason rather than by fighting together like savages. It was all very well for the man in the street, a civilian like himself, to say "We don't want war," but such a statement did not carry one-fifth the weight of similar statements made by men who had been through the world struggle. Therefore, when members of the association spoke in that way it was indeed an important matter.