SANITY IN OUTLOOK

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 303, 20 September 1939, Page 6

SANITY IN OUTLOOK

Professor Of History Looks At War

COMPARISON WITH 1914

A talk on the world situation was given by Professor F. L. W. Wood, professor of history at Victoria University College, at the Wellington Rotary Club’s luncheon yesterday. The outstanding thing about the Bolish problem, said Professor Wood, was that because of geographical facts there were difficulties which could no’, be swept aside without a spirit of goodwill and friendship. The trouble was that Poland had no physical frontiers. Indeed, there were none in the whole of that part of north-eastern Europe. There was nothing to indicate where the soil of one country ended and that of another began. Eastern Europe could not very well be put into compartments, and each one left to go upon its own way. It was one vast, fiat plain, without clearly marked borders, and, consequently, there had been for ages an intermingling of races. One clear-cut example was presented in Danzig. This was not a very large city. It was about half as large again as Auckland. It was a German city, which for ages had served as the bottleneck of Poland to and from the Baltic Sea. Where a majority ruled a minority, no legal machinery in the world could make such people live together in peace unless they were ruled by friendship and justice. Professor Wood said that the last peace settlement had broken down because, in some respects, it was a bad settlement, conceived in an atmosphere of hate and lived in an atmosphere of hatred produced by the last war. The passions, which had been stirred up by the war that was to have brought peace destroyed whatever chance there might have been to develop a permanent peace in Europe. Twofold Problem.

The problem now was a twofold one. The first was the technical military problem of how -to win the war, a matter for the technical experts. The second was the problem likely to be encountered on the home front —how to avoid the recurrence of those influences and forces that people would exorcise from the world, so that they should not jeopardize or abandon those things they set out to preserve. It was inevitable that, as the war progressed, civil liberties would be curtailed, and people would have to discipline themselves. The objectives of the war had been stated with commendable clarity by both Mr. Chamberlain and the Acting-Prime Minister of New Zealand, "Mr. Fraser. Britain was not fighting with indiscriminate hatred, and was not fighting against the German people as a people. She was at war against a certain code of ideas, which luad gained control over one of the greatest peoples in the world. Indiscriminate hatred and blindness to truth were to be deplored, and yet it was conceivable that these might dedevelop in certain circumstances, and delay the foundation of a just and lasting peace. His main hope of a retention of sanity was the reaction of the public in New Zealand to the news of the war.

He was only a youngster when the last war broke out in 1914, but Ire was old enough to note the difference in the reactions then and today. To his mind people had kept their heads better than in 1914. For all that there might still be trouble on the ’ home front.

Professor Wood advised everyone to hold steadfastly to high ideals, as, he said, history had proved that, even when only a few people did so, they were able to reconstruct a world.