AFTER THE WAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 51, 28 August 1940, Page 11

AFTER THE WAR

BUILDING NEW WORLD

COURSE TO FOLLOW

MORAL PRINCIPLES

The causes of the present breakdown of peace and the principles upon which eventual reconstruction should be built were discussed byMr. F. Martyn Renner, principal of Rongotai College, in an address to the Wellington branch of the League of Nations Union yesterday afternoon. Mr. Renner said he was one of those people who believed in the League of Nations and all that the League had stood for, but he could not conceal from himself the unpleasant fact that the League had failed to accomplish what it set out to do. Why had the League failed? Answering that question, Mr. Renner detailed a long list of broken pledges. By 1939 every kind of political duplicity had been practised by nearly every nation; every kind of promise made to ensure peace had been broken, he said. "I have, I think, adduced enough evidence to prove that our modern civilisation fell a prey to the dogs of war because the" moral fabric of civilisation was no longer held together by faith in the pledged word given and received," said Mr. Renner. "Ethics is the cement of civilisation. As Sullivan rightly observes in 'Current History': 'Promise-breaking by individuals cures itself —people just stop relying on the faithless ones. But when nations break promises, the individual cannot protect himself. He is helpless, and his helplessness leads to a frightened apprehension that the last few years has seen all about us.'" INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION. After dealing with the importance of the economic problem from 1919 onward as a contributory cause to the present conflict and discussing its moral implications; Mr. Renner went o- to say that mankind was suffering £;om maladjustment. He had, as far as Western civilisation was concerned, failed completely to adjust his social and political habits and traditions to an era for which his own scientists were responsible—the Industrial Revolution. When too much food was produced by n -dern methods it was allowed to rot. When machines were created capable of doing the work of 50 men or women they were worked quarter time or dismantled rather than that too much of machine products should be created. "Science and Nature combined were ready to give us more than enough to supply every individual on this planet; but our futile social, economic, and financial organisations coald not accommodate themselves to this new era and to a rapidly changing world," said Mr. Renner. "The obvious facts were these: Man's moral code, his ethical values, were smashed with the result that good faith between nation and nation and between the State and the individual became valueless; the ever-persisent conflict between moral ideals and political realities proceeded relentlessly; the 'time lag' between the. -movements of events (set in motion by scientific invention and discovery), and the movements of men's minds, threw the whole machine of civilisation out of gear. "These facts, taken together, present well-nigh insoluble problems when we come to seek out the principles upon which to reconstruct the world and its civilisation. ETHICAL VALUES. "A pre-requisite for any plan of reconstruction is a recognition that a 'political' peace must be a failure. By a 'political' peace, I mean any peace that is based upon reparations, tariffs, cessions of territory, evacuation of minorities, etc. Every peace that has so far been signed at the end of a war has been a 'political' peace. Let us gei away from that type. Let us establish peace based, not on political realities, but on ethical values or, if you like, moral ideals. "Any peace or any plan of reconstruction based upon material gains for one State and consequent material losses for another, is doomed to failure. International bitterness, jealousies, and recriminations are bound to follow. "True peace can come and will only come, when those who plan it, can look beyond mere national interests and will take into consideration all nations and all men and realise that man's destiny is upward, physically, spiritually, mentally, and morally, that a great Divine Force is moving him steadily forward and upward in the great plan of creation and that every individual, irrespective of nationality or creed, must be given the opportunity to make his contribution to that movement. "The world requires healing first— faith in the promised word must be restored; honest guarantees that pledges will be kept, must be given and received; invention and discovery must be rightly and judiciously applied to man's needs. Yet much can be done in anticipation of the full establishment of a new order based upon moral values rather than upon political realities." TERRITORIAL CLAIMS. What the speaker meant by moral values was then explained by him in detail. First of all, there must be the

equitable adjustment of territorial claims and boundaries, he said. There must be avoidance of the mistakes made at the end of the last war, when kingdoms and empires were dismembered and new States made from the fragments jumbled together, the motives being the desire to wreak punishment and to satisfy the wish for territorial aggrandisement or for economical advantage.

Secondly, the repair of damage and devastation should be undertaken immediately with every precaution against the incidence and spread of pestilence. Let the magnanimity of the conqueror bring aid to the defeated so that the work of repairing ruined cities would be done by all— Belgian and Dutchman, German and Frenchman, Pole, Briton, and Scandinavian. Such a work so undertaken would be man's finest preparation for a new era of greater happiness and better understanding. It would also put to work demobilised soldiers and sailors, whose absorption into the economic life of the various countries would otherwise create a difficult problem. Thirdly, there should be general economic action to promote the economic welfare of mankind. Economic planning and drastic alteration of the present financial system must be undertaken as a sure guarantee of future peace. All war debts would have to be wiped out and off. Money so lent and borrowed would have to be regarded as contributions to the war effort. "International planning for the welfare of mankind envisages the abolition of Capitalism, of tariff walls and barriers, the revision of the world's monetary system, and the provision of raw materials without let or hindrance to whatever nations require them," he said. "It postulates, too, a reconsideration of the position of mandates and colonies. The magnitude of such a task is obvious, but its magnitude is j only equalled by its urgent necessity. HUNGER AND RELIGION. "The economic system of our present age has been responsible for too much hunger, too much senseless waste. And when amongst the great mass of people there are men and women confronted with only the bare necessaries of life,' with poverty itself: when they become j prematurely aged and worn out with j unremitting toil,-repaid by inadequate wages, moral and .spiritual values for them cease to exist. However . much one would deny its truth, it is a fact that religion makes no appeal to the empty stomach and that the code of ethics and morality breaks before the spectres -of poverty and want. You may ! say that this savours too much of the often preached doctrine of social justice. A cheap sneer—social justice is what every man, woman, and child on this earth is entitled to, and it will come all the sooner when it is universally recognised that man's only excuse J for living, the only reason why he has < been given life, mind, and soul, is that he may play his part in hastening j that Divine event to which all creation moves —call it the Millennium, the brotherhood of man, whatever you will. "Service is the essence of life as it is the essence of business. Once it is acknowledged that work in this world should not primarily be performed to reap profit for the employer, that the quality of the work done matters more than the wages for which it is done, when all men realise that work, not money, is man's contribution in the way of service to the world,, then international planning for human welfare will be close to accomplishment. EDUCATIONAL FORCES. "In preparation for it, the educational forces of every country should be directed more and more to the teach- j ing and exemplifying of the doctrine that service for the benefit of one's fellows is the keystone of human progress and happiness. Imbue our young people with that idea and the other great principles of reconstruction follow —gradual disarmament, and com- j pulsory arbitration in the case of all disputes between nations. "The young people of today are the hope of tomorrow—our hope of seeing a better world built. Without them we shall fail. We can enlist their services in a nobler cause than that to.which Hitler bent the young people of Germany. Given the opportunity and the scope, education, I firmly believe, will restore to the world all that it has lost —faith in man's ultimate destiny and faith in the pledged word. It can, I j believe, put an end to the conflict of | motives—moral ideals as against political realities. International economic planning, disarmament, and settlement of disputes will then come easily as a matter of course."