PEACE OR WAR?

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 74, 24 September 1938, Page 7

PEACE OR WAR?

WOMAN'S PLACE

A SICK WORLD

NEED FOR ADJUSTMENT

! Nationalism as opposed to natural : individual love and kindness was at ' the foot of all strife, Professor Kalidas Nag, of the University of Calcutta, declared when addressing members of the Lyceum Club yesterday, and a new understanding was needed to bring world peace. He expressed the view that woman's love and sympathy could cure a sick world and said that the day would come when the women of the world would reject war, racial differences, and oppression. Referring to international jealousies and strife, Dr. Nag said they were just a form of derangement. The whole of humanity was now passing through a malaise and the malady might prove fatal. Speech was the only .way in which man could communicate with his fellows. Nature talked without speech but man was too busy to listen. Nature talked through heat and light. There was only one rhythm in life and it was responsible for the smile, charity, dealings between man and man and nation and nation. Sometimes people should think of what was happening in the world. At the present time there was a difference of opinion between Czechoslovakia and Germany and behind the opinion a volume was growing. First came rudeness, then violence, and finally a desire to murder all. In civil life that could not happen because differences were settled by a third party, but in political life the emotional side developed as patriotism. All the war movements of the world were associated in some way with patriotism—with the thought that one's own country was the best. It was the cumulative effect of defective education that there was *>ne code for civil life and another for national life. It was preposterous to consider that there was one set of morals for civil life and another set for political life. Who would agree that there should be one set of morals for men and another for women? A woman was yet human. Humanity was the basis—masculinity or femininity did not matter. The whole question was whether or not there should be one set of morals for the individual and the nation. WORK FOB HUMANITY. Dr. Nag said of the reformers of India, that they were working for humanity as a whole as well as for India. Everyone could help. What one person Sid in a day might be negli- • gible but it was not the actual doing; it was the effect of it. In India the most active man of today was the poet Tagore who said of himself that he was just a useless schoolboy. He had j been disappointing as a boy but he had grown up to be somebody. If the individual and national life were compared, then everyone had a great part to play. Tagore said everyone had to be liberated. As a poet he brought out the great factor that peace and war was the trying place. Co-operation was needed to bring peace and happiness. Countless millions were waiting for peace in the world —in Czechoslovakia and in Germany herself. The individual had to feel that, and when the individual and the universal became one war would be transformed into peape. It was human beings who transformed peace into war and they could do the reverse* The innate harmony that was in the soul of creation should be brought back. When the universe went out of tune it was woman's privilege to bring it back through her illimitable capacity for sympathy. Tagore believed woman "had that great privilege. The great privilege of womanhood was to bring peace back to the world —fundamental peace, the peace of silent love and understanding. A mother's love was always a mother's love; there was no caste, creed, or colour in it. Civilisation of today, said Dr. Nag, only knew its own machines and man was enmeshed in them and was being crushed by them. Everywhere was bitterness. Where was the culture? There were days when people waited for the German composers to produce music; tod*ay they feared the production of war. War had to be stamped out." The nations were sick but by gentle nursing they could be brought back to health. That was the message of Tagore, and men and women had grown up who believed that peace and love could be brought back to the world. There was strife in India, but it was political. In the cultural plane woman was the great leveller and the women of India were showing the men the way to real democracy. Many of the women did not write at all, but there were I countless students who were working I for a better state. Terrible poverty, existed in India while the Europeans were making millions out of the jute the Indians were j producing. That state of affairs could j not go on; the women would not allow it to go on. They were not politicians, but they were economists. If woman was given the preference between war and peace she would vote for peace, and the time would come when women would demand peace and Nature would be able to readjust her balance.