POETIC CRITIC

Greymouth Evening Star, 9 July 1931, Page 3

POETIC CRITIC

ANTI-PACIFIST’S VIEWS.

LONDON, June 26. Sir Arthur Keith, the eminent anthropologist, will not budge an inch from the statement which he made in his rectoral address to the Aberdeen University that war was Nature’s prun-ing-hook. Sitting in a room at the Royal College of Surgeons, surrounded by skulls and bones, Sir Arthur replied to criticism of his remarks. Ho was particularly concerned with Mr. John Dr,inkwater’s critical poem, which ends: —

If you have no better gospel for salvation of the young Then, in tho name of science, for God’s sake hold your tongue.

“1 admit,” said Sir Arthur, *t‘hat my speech was opposed to pacifist ideals, but when I feel that the many excellent people who are striving to prevent war are wrong I must speak out. If nations did not strive desperately for their independence they would frustrate the whole of their evolutionary history. “Mr Drinkwater and other estimable people, may not like my statement that war is Nature’s pruning-hook, but it is so. War does kill off the best of the nation’s youth, but the stock is not affected. It is nonsense to say that Great Britain is suffering because she lost many of her finest young men in tho war. We are producing to-day as fine fellows as before the war. ■ “We are too obsessed with the ‘peace and plenty’ attitude, and shrink from hardship and suffering. Everything worth having in life can only be attained by risk. A nation, unwilling to sacrifice its life, will cease to exist.”