Can All Sorts of People Live Together In Peace

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXIX, Issue 13238, 14 January 1941, Page 6

Can All Sorts of People Live Together In Peace

The question is perhaps hardly worth asking, for it is obvious enough: yet in these days, when Nazis and Fascists and Bolsheviks would have us all turned out in mass formation, it is worth while to remember that the very essence of the strength of the British Empire is that we all agree to disagree. No single race are we under the flag, but marie up of every race under the sun. Our Dominions are a miniature League of Nations. All peoples, countries, and languages are represented in them, and all live together in tolerance, amity, and cooperative effort and goodwill. Think what that means, think of the wide diversity of creeds, ideals, customs, prejudices, hopes, and suppressed hatreds locked up in the breasts of , the 500 million people who compose | our Commonwealth. I Between the North Pole and the South Pole there is no wider difference than between the peoples and policies of our Empire, and in the intervening seas are no depths more profound than the mental and spiritual deeps that divide our people, and yet the sum total is a vase harmony of purpose and agreement. The Great British Family This worldwide family of which we are members embraces more than 70 million white people—British, Irish, French, Dutch, German, Ital-' ian, Hungarian, Czech, Russian, and in fact sons and daughters of every white nation, all of whom have elected to become British.

In our family there are a,lso 300 million native people of India, 40 million coloured people in our tropical colonies, six million Arabs, six million Malays, a million Chinese, a million Polynesians; lesser hosts of lesser peoples, and, to crown the whole, about 100,000 of the original inhabitants of North America, the splendid and courageous Red Indians. Not one of these teeming com-

munities, whether natives or settlers from lands beyond their present borders, complains. of injustice or illtreatment. The French Canadians proud of their language, literature, and cultural and commercial heritage, glory in their allegiance to the flag. The' Germans in Canada, Australia and other Dominions, industrious and model citizens, rejoice to be counted of the nation that permits them freedom to live without the prying inquisition of the Gestapo, and without the necessity of stiffening into fantastic attitudes to preface Good-Morning with the ludicrous Heil Hitler. Perfect Tolerance Political differences do not divide these many peoples made one. Perfect tolerance permits every man, woman, and child to follow their own religion. There is agreement to differ and respect each other's creed among our 67 million Protestants, our 13 million Roman Catholics, our 210 million Hindus, our 100 million Mohammedans, our 12 million Buddhists, our 12 million Animists, our 4 million Sikhs, Jains and Parsees, and our millions of Jews. Between creed and creed and between man and man vast chasms oi thought and practice yawn unbridgeable, and all are content to agree to disagree. It is with us the very nature of things. It requires all sorts to make a world we say, and all sorts and conditions are oi the great British brotherhood, making allowances one for another, content to live and let live.

Whatever the petty troubles and vexations of life, we all know that our single aim is noble and unoeifish, that we seek the greatest good of all our far-flung family.