PEACE BY THE SWORD

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22337, 26 February 1938, Page 13

PEACE BY THE SWORD

TO THE EDITOIt OF THE PKESS. Sir,—Mr F. G. Hall-Jones's oratorical effort at the Rotary Conference, reported in your paper this morning, is certainly worthy of a place in a dramatic competition. The fervour, pathos, vivid word-picturing and pathetic appeal surpass even the best performance of a Navy League exponent! All so completely different from the address of the World President of Rotary some years ago in Christchurch; so much more picturesque, so much more vivid! Think, for example, of the "whirr of the aeroplane like, the voice of an angel from the skies, whispering 'Peace be still,' to this troubled world." How convincing and poetic. And then that remarkable passage in which Germany is represented "as "a have-not." Mr Hall-Jones declares "we are a possessor nation, Germany is a havenot." How telling! And how did we become a possessor- nation? By grabbing 4,500,000 square miles of territory with 88,000,000 souls, from 1870 to 1898, in just under 20 years. Not a bad achievement! We, of course, generously treat Germany as a "have-not" and intend to perpetuate this kindly feeling. We shall retain our superiority by means of the "whirring aeroplanes." And then Mr Hall-Jones naively asks: "Are understanding and goodwill sufficient in themselves to solve the problem?" Mr Hall-Jones has evidently never read the "Great Experiment" of William Penn or he could scarcely have been guilty of such a statement that "Had the Quakers not taken the musket with the Bible to America the war-whoops would have echoed over their burning villages." But one can excuse such poetic licence. We can imagine him parading our streets donned in a regulation gas-mask and a loaded walking-stick. Is it not tremendously true that violence begets violence? The world to-day is full of violence. Unfortunately for the world, and for Great Britain, too, the "maidens of understanding and goodwill" have never walked in "the forests of the ogres" unarmed and in the spirit of peace: they have always carried plenteous supplies of dry powder, firearms, and shining spears, and seem to it that the Red Cross Knights were close at hand! Surely Rotary can show us something more inspiring and hopeful in its mission of brotherhood and internationalism for which it boasts. The power of non-violent resistance has never been tried, to our eternal shame, and until we take courage and put into operation those forces making for righteousness, we shajl grovel on in the mire of despair, suspicion, and fear.—Yours, etc., C. R. N. MACKIE. February 23, 1938.