CRY FOR DISARMAMENT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 230, 29 September 1931, Page 5

CRY FOR DISARMAMENT.

THE GENEVA CONFERENCE

SUPFOKT IN NEW ZEALAND. MEETING AT TOWN lIALL. The need to cultivate the will to peace and rid civilisation of the menace of war through progressive, universal disarmament was stressed by speakers at a meeting convened at the concert chamber last evening by the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. The meeting was held in support of the forthcoming Disarmament Conference at Geneva, and marked the final rally in the local campaign to secure signatures to the disarmament petition now being circulated throughout the, world.

The chairman, Sir George Fowlds, read letters of apology from the Rt. Hon. (J. W. Forbes, the Rt. Hon. J. G. Coates, and Mr. H. E. Holland, who had been asked to attend. The three party leaders, added the chairman, would address a similar disarmament meeting to bo held in Wellington on October 5.

Thirteen years had elapsed since the Powers had signed the pledge of the League of Nations to disarm, said Archdeacon G. Mac Murray. Other nations must follow Britain's lead in reducing arms if civilisation was to survive. Disarmament . should be a means of cultivating the will to peace, and must be accompanied by a great spiritual fight to turn man's combative instincts into productive channels. The people of the world must be awakened to the need for active, and not merely verbal support of the Kellogg Pact to abolish war, said the Rev. Ivo Bertram, who represented the Auckland Ministers' Association. Preparations for defence by arms were becoming measures of offence, and the money now spent on arms was required in a thousand other channels. Recent mimic air raids on London had indicated that future wars would mean the annihilation of cities and the slaughter of women and children. The world must disarm, or perish.

Speaking on behalf of the League of Nations' Union, Mr. T. Bloodworth said that the league could not function "unless the nations disarmed. The last war had cost 9,000,000 lives, and £50,000,000,000 in money, and to-day the world was spending £890,000,000 annually in war preparation. Of every pound levied as taxation in Britain, 14/ went to pay for the cost of past wars and for national defenee. A diversion of that sum into productive work would cure the unemployment problem.

"The adage that, if you want peace, you must prepare for war, is a conventional lie that died on the battlefields of France," said Mr. J. A. Lee, of the New Zealand Labour party. There was no security in arms, for competition in defence measures bred the spirit of wa.r. Religion and reason both urged man to cease this futile waste, and to show as much courage in the cause of peace as he had in war. The nations must move together in this new policy.

Mrs. E. Gibson and Mrs. M. B. Soljak outlined the efforts of the Women's International League over the past l(i years in the cause of peace. Mrs. Soljak said that the present petition was an attempt to draw the signatories of the Kellogg Pact together, so that the peoples themselves might take part in the forthcoming conference.

An eloquent concluding speech was made by Mr. K. H. Melvin, of the Auckland University College. The will to peace, he said, was steadily growing, and the defeatist belief that war was inevitable had been publicly disproved. Russia, Germany, France, Japan, and the United States had. no more desire for war than had Britain. The world's hopes for peace were crystallised at the Palace of the League 'of Nations. "Let the nations of the world no longer sharpen their swords on a temple of such historic stone," concluded Mr. Melvin.

The following motion, proposed by the chairman and seconded "by Mr. Egerton Gill, was carried unanimously:—"That this meeting of Auckland citizens calls on the Government to instruct New Zealand's representative at the disarmament conference at Geneva in 1932 to support progressive, universal, disarmament in order to promote lasting peace throughout the world."