UNITY IN GRIEF

Evening Star, Issue 23352, 23 August 1939, Page 12

UNITY IN GRIEF

“ Their suprejiue sacrifice has touched the hearts of all civilised peoples. Germany, no loss than America, has been quick to extend her sympathy to the bereaved relatives and to our country at this hour of pain and loss,” writes Sir James Marehant in the ‘ Bournemouth Echo’ (England), referring to the Thetis tragedy. “ Self-sacrifice, its spirit and its influence. overrides all boundaries of race or clime. That is its undying glory. Tho sudden and dreaded death into which our brothers have been plunged has arrested, if but for an hour, the voices of wrath and contention. “We stand together with bowed heads in humiliation and with quickened fear, before tho inevitable result of our having missed again the way of peace founded in justice. If the courage, devotion, knowledge, self-sacrifice of these men and tens of thousands like them in every land could be harnessed to nobler purposes to wage the great campaigns of peace against poverty, disease, and crime, the coming of the golden age which is still within our grasp, would be hastened in every land. B “ We seem to be passing through a mighty cosmic disturbance. This wavewashed mound is in danger of being submerged. Man, who has struggled upwards from the slime almost within

reach of the stars, has arrived at one of the fatal turning points in his material, social, and moral progress. Science has placed in his hands the power and knowledge of self-destruction or selfsalvation. Which way will he take? Neither way is inevitable. We have knowledge enough to go forward to a better civilisation or to plunge back into barbarism. “ I believe that love will gain the victory at the end. And this tragedy confirms my faith.