Christian Faith Is The Only Real Answer To Communism

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXVII, Issue 14930, 18 March 1949, Page 6

Christian Faith Is The Only Real Answer To Communism

Pessimism Only Fatal

“ism’ 7

Sir P. Duff On Fellow Travellers

(Special to The Times)

Wellington, today. “Of all the ‘-isms’ which plague mankind—Fascism, Nazism, Communism—only one is fatal to the human spirit, and that is Pessimism. Any one who looks at the progress of Britain in 1918 has under his very eyes a sovereign cure for pessimism,” said Sir Patrick Duff, Hisrlr Commissioner for the United Kingdom, at the opening of the Annual Conference of the United Commercial Travellers’ and Warehousemen’s Associ-

ation in Wellington this morning. “If we take stock of the year just passed, 1948 judged- simply in terms of British recovery, has been an annus mirabilis,” continued Sir Sir Patrick. “Britain’s export drive has been maintained against the predictions of most of the experts. American and other observers have acclaimed in public the power of organisation and the strength of will which Britain has displayed to the world. Britain has certainly run in 1948 a remarkable lap in the world’s relay race to Recovery. “It has not, been easy. It has not meant, only work; it has meant restraint and self-discipline. Never before has so much severe discipline been voluntarily accepted by anv free nation in so-called peace. And this in Britain has taken place con- I currently with an outpouring of new ideas and enterprise and design that the world has not witnessed since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. By means of this restraint in consumption and of this great-hearted industrial effort, ex ports from Britain in January o ; : this year reached 162 per cent of 1.938 volume. It is a signal manifestation not just of physical recovery but of moral and spiritual strength.

“Something more than mere physical factors is at the back o'' Britain’s growing recovery and of the example which she is giving to the world. The Communist doctrine which recognises nothing else but materialism and which has found its zenith in the terrible conception of the totalitarian or Slave States, has brought neither inward peace nor outward security. 'Owing to the Communists’ interpretation of world economics and to their appalling ‘fixed idea’ that collision between Communists and non-Com-munist States is inevitable, Russia and Russia’s agents in New Zealand and elsewhere are perpetually at work to undermine the recovery of all non-Communist countries and to attack everything which promises to bring the world back to mutua 1 goodwill and to the recognition of the worth and dignity of each human being. “But the answer to Communist materialism, which tsyphons the soul out of man, is hot ,just some other foi'm of materialism, however improved rr enlightened. The answer is not. materialism in any form at all. It is. rather, the faith with which, in the Pilgrim's Progress, Bunyan endowed Christian to take him along his difficult journey. More important than any mere economic or political guidance is spiritual guidance which will lift human life from preoccupation with its material circumstances to a sense of its participation in a greater destiny. “In these days, when so much of human outlook has been depressed to materialist standards people are apt to under-rate spiritual forces. It is true that you can’t buy six pennyworth of courage over the counter at the grocers, like you can buv six pennyworth of tea. But you will make a monstrous error if on that account you think that courage is not as real a thing as tea, or not a more dynamic agent than either i guns or butter. .“The progress which Britain has made in the last year has been a manifestation of something more than mechanical strength. It has been strength of will. “Commercial travellers aren t the only kind of travellers. There arc other travellers today called “fellow travellers”: and they are feverishly busy. Their orders are to sow discord and hate wherever they go. Only ideas can neutralise ideas. The Chrstian idea has got to prove itself better than the Marxist idea or els 0 must succumb to it. It is ‘un to’ a Christian to carry his Christianity into his business or Ins employment or his trade union every dsy, in the scime v/riy the Communist carries his Communism into his business and his employment and his trade union every day, “The fellow-travellers are travelling industriously in Communism and in chaos. To Commercial Travellers I would say: Help your fellowmen hv travelling in coinage and •in charity, as well as in commodities. And let your Travelling be Christian as well as Commerical.”