MR. SEMPLE AND WAR

Greymouth Evening Star, 1 November 1939, Page 10

MR. SEMPLE AND WAR

REMARKS' AT RUNANGA. His attitude to war was strongly expressed by Mr. R. Semple (Minister of Public Works) in addressing the gathering at the luncheon at Runanga, yesterday afternoon. The Minister said that he was glad to be present, but some day he hoped to meet the people of Runanga for a talk under different circumstances from those which characterised the world to-day. Sometimes he felt a saddened man, becahise the war in Europe contradicted all that he stood for. He had been hoping and trusting that the experience of the last blood-bath had brought sympathy and wisdom to the world, but now they were plunged into another. There was no need for him to tell his listeners what he thought of war. He knew that there were people in the world so blind with hatred that one could not say a word against war without being called unpatriotic,, but Dr. Johnson had said “Patriotism is the refuge of cowards,” and there were, thousands of cowards who had used that word to rob their fellow men. He (Mr. Semple) would change places with no man in his love for New Zealand, but war was the negation of reason and the beginning of madness. It was in conflict of Christianity, .it was the negation of everything that Christ stood for and perished on the Cross for. He (Mr. Semple) had spoken on the platform, trying to instil into people the futility of war and had been struggling to lift this country aiid to make it an example and a beacon light for the rest of the world when this calamity came and threw the whole world out of gear. As Bernard Shaw said of the death of the great reformed Keir Hardy, at the beginning of the Great War, "what else could he be"—that was how he (Mr. Semple) felt about it to-day—he hated it. Referring to the construction and his inspection of the military camps, he said that the best was not good enough for . the young men in them, but how could he feel happy about it, when he felt that they were being trained to fly into the jaws of death?

“At the same time,” concluded Mr. Semple, "we cherish the thought that we have free and unfettered souls and the right to political freedom but that, to-day, is being threatened by despotic dictatorships which snatch away all that from their own people and rule them by the firing squad, the hangman’s rope and the dungeon, and as much us I hate the business, we have got to fight to protect ourselves from that sort of thing.”