HELP ABYSSINIA

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 87, 9 October 1935, Page 11

HELP ABYSSINIA

ARCHBISHOP'S APPEAL

ENGLISH CHURCH CONGRESS

IuED CROSS WORK

(British Official Wiroloss.i j (Received October 9, 11.20 a.m.) EUGBY, October S. Speafang- today at the opening session of the 65th Church Congress at Bournemouth, the Archbishop of Canjtcrburj- referred to the outbreak or hostilities in Abyssinia. He said that »>ey had met in a mood of mingled distress; and indignation. "How can we fail to'be indignant," he asked, "when we sec a great European Power which has signed the Covenant of the League and the Pact of Paris treating these solemn obligations with cynical contempt and launching a fierce attack upon a fellow-member of the League? Ii thane was ever an act of unprovoked aggression, surely it is this. Abyssinia may be a backward State, but is it possible to think without resentment and quickening of the heart of a proud and a«cient people defending their own land with ■ scanty military resources, with scarcely any hospitals, surgeons, or nqrses, being mowed down by a vast and pitiless machine of war, equipped with all the power which science has invented for the destruction of human life?" ' The Archbishop then announced a forthcoming appeal for assistance for Red Cross work in Abyssinia, and asked! for the support pf churchpeople. Turning to the general issue, Dr. Lang, said that they must recognise that peace in itself was not an ideal, and had iao intrinsic worth unless it meant acquiescence in justice and the rule of lacw. The League of Nations was created to establish the collective rule of law, and was the only alternative to national self-assertion or those several alliances which had been proved not to protect peace, but to provoke war. "No selfish interest moves us," he said, "and no selfish interest must dissuade us from taking our place ■with other nations bound to the Covenant in its defence."

Finally, the Archbishop said that they were bound to give full weight in the dispute to the needs of Italy for expansion iand fuller access to supplies of raw material, and he referred sympathetically to proposals for consideration qf an equitable distribution ofthe economic resources of undeveloped parts of the world.

The Congress, which is presided over by the Bishop of Winchester, has a full programme of discussions under the general title of "Christianity in the Modern State." •