PROBLEM LIES AT HOME

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 48, 26 February 1938, Page 15

PROBLEM LIES AT HOME

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —lt is refreshing to read an article such as your leader of Wednesday, dealing with the causes instead of the obvious consequences of existing international unrest. You illustrate ably the point of Mr. G. K. Howard's address, which is, briefly, that it is hopeless to attempt to produce a stable international order out of nations suffering from unstable internal conditions. In other words, you cannot make a good omelette of bad eggs. Solve the problem at home and you will be making a valuable contribution to a real world settlement.

Your point will still hold good in dealing with the problems of the nation itself in that they lie in the homes which make the nation and in the individuals which make the homes. Increased population can never make this Dominion greater if that population consists of so many million individual problems. The need of the individual at this moment is not a material need; it is a spiritual one; and the greatness of this country will depend upon the percentage of citizens who have spiritual and moral victory in every area of their lives and who will not rest content until New Zealand is a spiritual force in the world. One and a half million people controlled by God can lead the world to a new social order.

In the words of the Oxford Group publication, "Rising Tide," which graphically demonstrates this to be not theory, but fact: "Everybody wants to see the other fellow changed. Every nation wants to see the other nation changed. But everybody is waiting for the other nation to begin." It means that new men can make new nations and new nations can make a new world. The solution to our problems is answered in the rising tide of men and women all over the world who realise that if you want an answer for the world the best place to start with is—yourself!—l am, etc.,

JOHN F. BECKETT.