CAUSES OF WAR.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 32, 8 February 1939, Page 15

CAUSES OF WAR.

CLERGYMEN'S VIEWS. WHAT LUDWIG THINKS. THE GERMAN CHARACTER. — i (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, February 2. There are several clergymen in the State who frequently criticise the present social order. The most prominent of them is the Anglican Bishop of Goulburn, Bishop Burgmann. Speaking at the Summer School of Political Science at Canberra, he said that unless the spirit of truth and justice were reborn in civilisation it would go up in the flame of war. The Rev. J. W. Burton, of Wesley Chapel, Sydney, said greed had caused most wars, and until there was a change in spirit there could be no lasting peace. Another view, however, of some of the causes of war was taken by the famous German Jewish biographer Emil Ludwig. It was a mistaken idea, he said, to assume that Germany would have been different to-day if she had been treated more generously at Versailles.

"Only people who do not understand the German national character make that mistake," he declared. "The_ German people alone in mankind's history are obsessed by a passion to obey. They want revenge and victory. If they had been treated considerately, their rearmament would have surprised the world 10 years earlier than it actually did."