"PEACE IN OUR TIME"

Evening Post, Volume 137, Issue CXI, 10 June 1926, Page 8

"PEACE IN OUR TIME"

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —In your issue of Ist June I read, with interest an account of a lecture given by Commandep J. R. Middleton, D.5.0., to the Navy League on the question of the need for adequate naval defence. I hold that propaganda for increased defence expenditure is morally wrong, though I have the greatest respect for the numerous and influential persons who support it. Of all the statements the worthy Commander made certainly the most ridiculous and incorrect was that "the best way to have peace was to be prepared for war." Will he or any member of the Navy League show me why the enormous military and naval expenditure on the part of the nations failed to prevent the Great War from starting? According to hig reasoning there should have been no war, and yet, in spite of Dreadnoughts and super-Dreadnoughts, the fact is that war actually took place. The nations of to-day are spending five hundred millions on war preparations—"defence" as they prefer to call them. Our Empire heads the list with £130,000,000. Would not this huge expenditure be better spent on education, child welfare work, town-planning, and in fighting dirt, disease, and preventable illness? What I want to know is if the nations spend a thousand millions, or, for that matter, ten thousand millions, on war preparation shall we be any surer of peace? Personally I don't think so. My view is that if a quarter of the money at present spent on war preparation was spent on pence propaganda it would do more good. However, I would like the Navy League to know that I aw not in favour of scrapping the Navy^-^ol yet at any rate—but I do think that we should in the meantime do all in our power to promote international goodwill. The Commander advises us to regard other nations as "potential enemies." My answer to this is why not regard them as "potential friends"? Will he deny that it_ is only the idiotic desire on the part of certain interested individuals for markets, concessions, etc., that is disrupting the world's peace to-day? 'If he doeß attempt to deny it, let him look at the "hotch-potch" in China. In conclusion, Sir, I venture to predict that it is not, very far distant when individuals who go talking about the "next war" will be put iv prison or deported. We hold no book for Communistic individuals who advocate internal strife as a method of settling our problems, and the time will come when people who either vaguely or distinctly foster international strife will be dealt with similarly.—l am, etc., H. G. RICHARDSON. East Takaka, ! • 6th June, 1926.