BROTHERHOOD OF MAN

Greymouth Evening Star, 12 February 1938, Page 6

BROTHERHOOD OF MAN

CIVILISATION’S ONLY HOPE

[per press association.]

AUCKLAND, February 12.

A keen student of European affairs in the last ten years, Dr. Arthur H. Ryan, lecturer in scholastic philosophy at Queen’s University, Belfast, who arrived by the Rangitiki, this morning, to take part in the Catholic Centenary celebrations at Auckland, had something outstanding to say concerning the present armament race among the nations. “One of the important points from the aspect of culture and civilisation, and still more so from the standpoint of Christianity, is the problem of the value of the human individual,” he said. “The Christian concept of the intrinsic worth of human personality has been submere-ed by the statesmen of more than one European country. There is a tendency in Russia, Germany, and, to a less dangerous extent, in some quarters of Italy, to look upon the individual as subservient to the State, in every conceivable way. The achievement of peace is the one hope for the continuance of Western civilisation. Everybody now realises Il is, but unfortunately the will to peace is sadly lacking in Europe today. Among tne historical reasons for this, one must place in the forefront the stupidity and vindictiveness of the victorious Powers at Versailles. Although it was alleged that the war was fought to end war, any child could have told the statesmen that crippling restrictions and unjust allocations of territory were bound to dislocate international trade, and leave behind a legacy of bitterness, inevitably antagonising the victims. The result is that we now have the sad spectacle of peoples who have achieved enormous advances in science and machinery, and who could by those means solve most of their problems, vieing with one another in placing their scientific -ifts at the service of the destruction of human life and property. Nothing but a return to the Christian concept, strict justice in international dealings, and a return of the Christian belief in the brotherhood of man, can save the world from uisasters still more appalling than those of 1914-18.”