MAKING OF WARS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 249, 21 October 1933, Page 1 (Supplement)

MAKING OF WARS.

OLD MEN AND YOUNG. PRESENT FEARS.

(By EILEEN DUGGAN-X

I had. teen reading Irene Rathbone's i<^r e That Were Young," one of the jooet natural, unpretentious, and convincing war novels yet written by a woman. It has an ambling stylelessECS3 that is like the apparent incoherence of life itself, but, like life it has a purpose, a pattern, and that purpose je to exposo the childish cruelty of war . The chief girl in it cries to a platitudinous uncle, "Let the old men eo and die who make the wars." It is the cry of youth the world over, for war is not the glorified thing that it was in the days of Attila's shields, Caesar's eagles, or Coeur de Lion's axes. Literature is inoculating the world, but so strong is the fever that we can scarcely as yet sense any abatement, for "the bright eyes of danger" still have their witchery for tie primeval in man. Ruskin is one of the clearest cases of unwilling subjugation. He himself confessed publicly to inconsistency in ■ lis utterances on it. His logic rejected it as being an animal solution of differences, but his imagination exalted it as a link with the bannerets of chivalry. Le Gallienne has the same difficulty: War I abhor The inarching street Of drum and fife, and I forget Wet eyes of widows, and forget Broken old mothers, and the whole Dark butchery without a soul. And even my peace-abiding , fe et Go marching with the marching street. ' Few have felt the exultation of it more than Julian Gienfell. t!ip fighting man shall from the sun Take warmth and life from the glowing gneed a witi the light foot winds to run, And with the trees to newer birth, And And when fighting shall be done, Great rest and fulness after dearth. All the bright company of heaven Hold him in their high comradeship, The Dog-star and the Sisters Seven Orion's belt and sworded hip. Helpless Multitude. There the doer speaks in contrast with the thinker, but, in the modern system of war, the thinker is drawn in as well as the doer. Never, in any age before, has the helplessness of the multitude in the »rip of national embroilments been more" displayed or the likeness between the combatants so stressed but, alas, will it be a warning to Europe, that quarrelsome continent? . Russia, according to modern historians, is being instructed in the necessity for and incited to the deed of world revolution. One writer says that imaginary calls to arms are given the young just as imaginary calls to fire are given to fire brigade recruits. Someone calls, "Are you ready?" meaning "to assist in another country's revolution, and with one throat the youngsters thunder, *We are ready!" Yet Hindus found on his return to bis own old village that the people were obsessed by the fear of war His cousin could not sleep for thmkin 0 that the Polish raids might begin again and he and others bad a very melancholia of terror. Russia may enter a European war, if it comes, but she is certainly not ready for it, and, if her j peasantry mean what they say, it will be by no will of theirs. Even Belloc, who was optimistic, now fears another war. Chesterton goes further and prophesies that it will begin on the Polish frontier. The Literary Digest," in printing some of Sassoons poems, comments on their interest in the light of the new war that is threatening. And we here are as far from the thoughts of war as we were in 1914, for we are an island people and island peoples have ingrowing thoughts. we are like children worrying over a call before without noticing a bull behind. And though it seems a strange thing to say, it is as well, as far as the majority is concerned, for we will have enough time to realise misery if or when it

comes. . . Some investigators claim tnat tne slump has proved Angell's theory concerning finance and war, but slumps have followed all wars, and the depression that followed the Napoleonic wars did not prevent the war of 1914. What Angell has proved is the folly of war from an economic point of view, and the "New York Bankers' Journal" has in more recent time echoed his sentiments by pointing out that the lessoii of the last war is that war itself is impracticable in a highly civilised world. The scale of conflicts has increased so hugely that continents of men were made mercenaries. Visitors who had just returned from Europe tell anecdotes of visits to soldiers' graves in France, and of similar warnings and mutterings that there will be soon newer graves and_ a newer "Unknown Soldier." In spite of peace leagues, national and international, Europe has gooseflesh again. Does Youth Enow? Chesterton, as usual, takes his own line, and breaks a lance against those that cry, "Let the old men go and die that make the wars." He says:/! am only saying that nobody has a right to assume at the start that no statesman has a right to risk war for the sake of ideas that change or preserve civilisation. In short, there was nothing grotesquely doddering and decadent about the old men who, twenty years ago, tried to rule the troubled and troublesome race of men. Some were right and some were wrong, but most were vigilant, and all were bound, in any case, to take a risk. I think this is worth mentioning now for a new reason. We are already drifting horribly near to a new war, which will probably start on the Polish border. The young men have had 19 years in which to learn to avoid it. I wonder whether they do know much more about how to avoid it than the despised and drivelling old men of 1914. How many of the young men, for instance, have made the smallest attempt to understand Poland? How many would have anything to say to Hitler, to dissuade him from setting all Christendom aflame by a raid on Poland? Or have the young men been thinking of nothing since 1914 except the senile depravity of the old men of that date?" Most of that is true, but, alas! are 19 years enough in which to learn to end what appears almost indestructible in man himself, that spirit, in its best form, adventure, in its worst form, greed, that has made the more active history of the human race? From the tribe to the nation, from Moses to Marx, it has been there, and the making of universal peace is as slow as the making of worlds. But, though it be as slow as . starlight, we must still hope on, counting each peace league, however feeble, as an assistant on the way. It will be ceded by .most historians that the League of Nations was a slight improvement on the Triple Alliance, although earth's Talleyrands will never die.