THREATENING WAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 36, 12 February 1938, Page 11

THREATENING WAR

NATIONS OF EUROPE

THE ARMAMENTS RACE

(By Telegraph—Press Association.) AUCKLAND, This Day. A keen student of European affairs for the last ten years, Dr. Arthur H. Ryan, lecturer in scholastic philosophy at. Queen's University, Belfast, [who arrived by the Rangitiki this I morning to take part in the Roman J Catholic centenary celebrations at ! Auckland, had something outstanding to say concerning the present armaments race among the nations.

"One of the important points from the aspect of culture and civilisation, and still more so irom the standpoint of Christianity, is the problem of the value of the human individual," be said. "The Christian concept of the intrinsic worth of- human personality has been submerged by statesmen in more than one .European country. There is a tendency in Russia and Germany, and to a less dangerous extent in some quarters in Italy, to look upon the individual as subservient to the State in every conceivable- way, state and. °"The achievement of peace is the one hope for the continuance of Western civilisation. Everybody now reahses this, but unfortunately the will to peace is sadly lacking in Europe today. Among historical reasons for this one must place in the forefront- the stupidity and vindictiveness oi! thei victorious Powers at Versailles. Although it was alleged that the war was fought to end war, any child could have tola the statesmen that crippling restrictions and unjust allocations of territory were bound to dislocate-interna-tional trade and leave behind a legacy of bitterness, inevitably antagonising the victims. .The result is that we now have the sad spectacle of peoples who have achieved enormous advances in science and machinery, who could by those means solve most of their problems, vicing with one another m placing their scientific gifts at the service of the destruction of human life and property. Nothing but a return to the Christian concept of strict justice in international dealings, and a return to ..tie Christian belief in the brotherhood of man, can save the world from disasters still more appalling that those ot 1914-18."