WHO LEFT IT?

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 3, 4 July 1922, Page 7

WHO LEFT IT?

LEGACY OF LATE WAR

'OLD MEN' AND THE 'YOUNG MEN'

A SPIRITED REPLY.

(By "Übique.")

The Post's footnote to Dr. Gibb's *xplaaiatdon of his views on wai- very ably strikes .at one foundation of his arguments in favour of the League of/Nations. Though I write from outside Wellington, I desire to put before Dr. Gibb and readers of Tlie Post the views of an ex-soldier on the League." '

It seems to be generally assumed that the soldier is in. favour of war, and Consequently, opposed to the attempts,of those who would end .it. I do not think I do any injustice to Dr. Gibb when I venture to say that he does not appreciate or feel to a tenth of what I. and other returned men do, the waste, the cruelty, the futility, and'most of all the unredeemed silliness of war. I hope he has not had it more vividly impressed on'him or more lasting cause to remember it than I have. But that is not the point; all agree that war is wrong—does that abolish it? . Dr. Gibb' will probably agree with us that cancer, phthisisj hunger, poverty, and crime aire wrong, but I fear that our sitting down and passing resolutions declaring them to be wrong arid unnecessa-y and opposed to Christianity will hardly prevent them, any 'more than will the solemn resolutions of his leaguers' influence the - next nation that goes mad and to war./ "THE METHOD OF THE OSTRICH." .The truth'-is —if history and experience are heeded—that war is and will be as inevitable in the future as disease and crime, till in a perfected world the idealists tell us of the three disappear together. When physicians and police become unnecessary, when the citizen in priv_te life leaves his valuables open to art entirely honest community,, then, we may believe in universal peace, for. the morals 'of communities individually will be in the aggregate the morals of the world of nations, as, unfortunately, they are now. It would be absurd to suggest that the present state of any community, Christian or heatheni' encourages any such hope. '■ "■. ■'■ V\ The idealist has but one easy method of avoiding facts, the method of the ostrich. Dr. Gibb and his fiiends say, in effect: "These things are wrong, therefore they ought riot to be, therefore they are not." This proved most effective with the evils of-, the slave trade, child labour, and in later times what is called (on the same principle) "the social scourge"—at least it prevented ecclesiastics from .worrying, about them. It proved, in. the last generation, 'equally effective in the case of' a war that could hardly havo been more certainly heralded unless the Angel Gabriel had announced it with a.trumpet. Will Dr. Gibb permit me to say that the method was hardly as appreciated by my generation .as it was by his? I will borrow from Sir Philip Gibbs the names of "The old., men" and "the young men"—the former, in no offensive sensed applying to the .generation so ably represented by Dr. Gibb. Thop. the truth of my statement will rob it of its harshness when I say that we young men owe the war. with all its horrors, and. ci'uelty and suffering, to the selfishness, the blindness, the complacency, the ; inability to' face facts or read history or hear the warn,ings even of the bravest and oldest, and best of themselves, of the old men. The old may and do and will deny it, and the only reason their denial will pass unchallenged is that the young men know it as well as they know the . futility of convincing the old* or of hoping to change the blind and complacent folly that prates of leagues _nd ,universal peace. For the supporters of the League are, almost without exception, the, old men. WHAT FOLLOWED ROMAN UNPREPAREDNESS. V In France,' I would ask Dr. Gibb to believe, men often did a little thinking; perhaps they did more in an hour than many nien do in a decade of peace. Circumstances were. also conducive to clear thinking—facts, there at least, were not-easily avoided. Out of it ■ all rose two dominant ideas—the one I havev spoken of, the responsibility for the war, voiced sometimes., with, oftener without, resentment,' as part of the day's work; the .other, the pathetic hope that never, again would England be unprepared.. Not, notice,- that there would be no more war; the soldier summed that up in .Gilbert Frankau's phrase, "These -—- fools who say there will; be no more wars." 'By the way, what is the League doing about the score or so of wars in full swing now? If I write with a little bitterness, perhaps Dr. Gibb will ascribe it to memories that are rather bitterer now. I recall one, when events were about the blackest ;in one of these terrible | "pushes," and men, exhausted by days and nights of continuous fighting, strain and anxiety, were almost too tired to care that their backs were at last against the last wall. A soldier, one of the best and bravfest I knew, broke a long silence to hope that "what looked like inevitable fate would at least give the example of preparedness to those that would come after us. I am glad he has been spared Dr. Gibb's pacifism. "Si vis pacem, para bellum," was the axiom of the greatest practical nation of antiquity, a nation that fell only when it forgot to prepare, and by its fall left the world, instead of file Roman peace of strength and justice, centuries the darkest in history. Preparation for defence does not i encourage war—the very reverse. Would the pacifist say that hospitals encourage disease, the police crime, or the safe : deposit dishonesty? Had Britain in 1914 had military resources equivalent to her responsibilities, no nation had dared to defy Britain's desire for peace, and tie great aim—. Pacisque imponere morem, Parcere subjectis et debellare superbbs— might have spared the world that con--1 vulsion. But was that the conscious aim of the old men? If it was, it was but theory at the best, as devoid of practical effect as any nebulous League of Nations. COST THE LIVES OF MILLIONS. The old men had: indeed been drugged by prosperity, power, and wealth,' and the ease and security born of them. They listened greedily to every sophist who assured'■ .them, as -we are being assured now, that war was impossible. All .their leaders (save one) "with a gravity and emphasis that cannot be exaggerated,"; assured them that a great war would-destroy Western civilisation —as Dr. Gibb says they are doing now. These charlatans of. our age, the political .economists, proved that war was "the great illusion," and when it proved a reality, proved it could not continue, and professors, of political economy and their half-baked .dupes are on the plat-, form at every meeting of League: supporters to-day, raving of wars that most of them knew 'of only through the newspapers. Even the quasi-scientific prophesies of to-day regarding the toodeadly methods' of slaughter had their counterpart then—as if the Great War was not, compared with it:, predecessors, a change as great as ' .From bows ' and arrows to rifles. The old 'arguments— r. tlie old hiding the head in tho sand, -the old refusal to' face facts—that cost the live? ot milium* of young .man. Cm it ha smou&lv. flii-_a_t_d,. «v_a

by Dr. Gibb, that there is the slightest evidence of any altered international spirit, other than the sort of repentance that follows the drunkard's "night out"? Will he suggest that;, to take our own case, we would hold these: fruitful islands, against a neighbour whose, commercial morality is even now a by-word among us, for one month, were it riot for the British fleet and power? And if the League is efficient, what justification is there for that fleet? Make no mistake, gentlemen whose misguided sup- . port encourages the League, the next war may be realised, not in the headlines and the pictures, but probably in our own country. There will be no cheering the young men away to fight; they.will be too badly needed here. And yet, when Mr. Massey, whose patriotism and common-sense and judgment the British world applauds, warns us that'wars are not ended', he is rebuked by some presbytery, rebuked, forsooth,, by men whose knowledge of war and of the conditions that lead: to it is almost as limited .as their capacity for practical affairs! A Martian might laugh—we, whose friends died for such folly, cannot. CHRISTIANITY THE ROAD TO . .PEACE. "The Christian Church ought to set its face like a, flint, against war." The Ohristiain Church. has been setting its face against war (or should have done so) for nearly two thousand years (incidentally while talking of "Christian soldiers" and "fighting the good fight" and the "weapons of faith"), and we may be excused if .we are sceptical. The Church has set its face against, crime, divorce, theft, and a thousand things that: are rank weeds to-day. "It ought to talk peace, and. peace only."' It talked all through the war, and was the most admitted failure of the war, among men whose surroundings drove' them irresistibly1 to faith, and drove them outside the Church to find it, and among the be- j reaved to whom it brought only the con- ] solation of talk. Let. it talk the "World to Christianity, the heathen to its belief, and then it may have talked the world to peace,. And let it commence by peace' within itself, by stilling the brawls and quarrels that so often disgrace ecclesiastical assemblies, by destroying the schisms and dissensions and differences in belief between the branches, of the Christian: Church—the schisms that are an eternal reproach to us in the mouth of the heathen, and that have cost humanity in blood and suffering as much as .ever have: the quarrels and ambitions of princes. . "Even because they have seduced my people, saying peace, and there was no peace." Is what The Post justly calls, "Oriental, fatalism". the s attitude, of a Christian? Dr. Gibb' would evidently find a congenial consensus of thought in the apathy and stagnation of them. Is it suggested that if,.for example, a new j Mohammedanism were to sweep over the I world, converting by the sword, .it would "not matter much what we do or | refrain from doing"? I fear Dr. Gibb's forbears and predecessors in faith would. haye1 had hard words for their descendant. "IF THEIR SACRIFICE MEANS ANYTHING—-" Much of what I have said has been said by eminent men of, our day—Sir. J. ; M. Barrie, Sir Philip-.Gibbs, and others ' —with a force and clearness to which I can make no:- pretence. All I oan, do is to say this: That in return for the liberties a.nd'rigihts won.for us in peace and war by those who have lived before us, we must be * prepared to maintain these against every chance of peace.and of war. We are, we trust, too sure of ourselves to use anything: we have for the purposes of aggression, but if we are on the side of justifce it becomes our duty to adequately defend that side. So soon as,'seduced by I care not what sentiment or.hope or temptation,- we leave anything to-chance,- we have betrayed our heritage, and left —not, probably, for-ourselves; but to' those that come after vs —what the last generation left to ours. We have no right to risk either their unpreparedness and defeat, or their .unpreparedness. and its cost. Those who most of-all. preserved our liberties for us can no longer, save by their mute example, urge us to keep these things safe, but their comrades can at .'least speak for them, and they who being dead yet speak would say now that' if > their sacrifice, means anything it means the solemn duty of preparedness for anything, war or peace. These men:, died for ' no' league, ..but for , Britain.. Whatever we iriay. hope from leagues,or alliances or universal peace, 'let us see I to it that we are prepared, and that our young men have not to hold- tlie gate that we have left unguarded. ' : >, Dunedin, 30th June.