DISARMAMENT

Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 141, 17 June 1922, Page 6

DISARMAMENT

ADDRESS BY REV. DR. GIBB

The Rev. Dr. Gibb delivered am address to. the Victoria College Free Disicussions Club. last evening' on the subject .of "Disarmament." The speaker contended that not only was the money spent in^war preparations in New Zealand a burden and a waste, but it was also a.n insane waste, for it must surely be obvious that if ever there were another such war as the Prime Minister had prophesied with such fatuous insistency, it would never be conducted along 1914 lines. There was, further, a possible danger of civil war even in conservative British-speaking- countries if war expenditure was not materially reduced. The working -class feared that if their Governments continue preparation for war, war will ensue, and they will once again bo asked to offer themselves as cannon-fodder. War. tho speaker emphasised, wrought untold damage to the intellectual and moral life of the people.^ There was something in every one of us that seemed to leap- up in respor.se to the call for physical courage, but, after all, courage was not the monopoly of the profession of the soldier. Gibbons, in his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," has. written: "The courage of a soldier is found to be the cheapest and most common quality of human nature." Militarism placed an intellectual arrest upon its victims. "Bring men together under military conditions," he declared, "and always an appeal seems to be made to the lower side of human, nature." Germany had been, armed to the teeth, ■but what had it benefited her? Although all the nations had contributed material to the bonfire which Germany lit, and even Great Britain was prepared for war in the way that best suited her conditions, still Germany relatively was the imost prepared, and yet her preparation had only served to precipitate her national downfall. Concluding, Dr. Gibb again emphasised the pressing necessity for disarmament from the .point of view of the unavoidable character of the next war. Professor Pringle, who was intimately in touch with world movements, had declared that during the last three years there has been a far greater advance in the production of instruments of death and destruction than in the preceding hundred years, even including the years from 19f4 to 1918. The next war must ■of necessity be a war of peoples. Speaking of the method of preventing a. recurrence of war, Dr. Gibb ventured the opinion that the union of the Church and organised Labour would prevent Governments from participating in the devastation of another conflict. The League of Nations also ga.ve promise of accomplishing- much. He compared the attitude of the leading statesmen of the other countries of the British Empire with that of New Zealand public men. The only lesson which ,the Prime Minister of New Zealand seemed to have learnt from 1914 and1 the succeeding years^was that Britain should bo prepared. "God help the man who learnt no more than that from the destruction of the Great War."

It was our doty to create the sentiment and stimulate the moral passion which compel statesmen, to disarm. The Empire of the future must be governed by the merchant and not the militarist, the teacher and not the tyrant, the servant and. not the soldier.