Greymouth Evening Star. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1947. The Basic Conflict

Greymouth Evening Star, 8 February 1947, Page 4

Greymouth Evening Star. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1947. The Basic Conflict

cannot have lasting peace unless the genuine rule of world law is established and enforced,” said President Truman in a message to Congress this week, detailing the progress made by the United Nations. “The justifiable hope and confidence to which the great progress of the United Nations in the past year has given rise can be betrayed and lost. The difficulties and dangers that lie before us are many and serious.” Mr. Truman was merely expressing sentiments already expressed by other world statesmen; by none more graphically. The conclusion which the average observer cannot avoid, however, is that while world leaders are making known their pacific endeavours, there is a common determination to preserve the instruments of force which can so easily be brought into action. There is a disturbingly ironic relationship between peace conferences and the frequent reports in the development of atomic energy as a lethal weapon. The world, it seems, has peace on its tongue, but not in its heart. Throughout more than 18 months the leaders of the nations have been struggling to devise a satisfactory formula for the establishment of peace, but it is obvious that there is no agreement as to the basis upon which peace should be founded. , 7 This century has been a period of conflict, and out of conflict has come revolution in various guises. Mankind is confronted with enormous issues which are still undecided, but the way in which these issues are finally determined will affect for better or worse the lives of people .still living and will fix the kind of life to be led by the generations to come. One provocative statement of the issue before the world was presented recently in the Spectator by the Rt. Rev. Frank Barry, Bishop of Southwell, when he wrote :—

What is being decided in this generation is whether the civilisation of the W est will continue to be in any sense Christian or whether this is to be the first post-Chris-tian age. But that is only another way of asking whether or not it can survive at all. ' Every civilisation hitherto has rested on a religious foundation. The Western legacy as we have received it has been the creation of Christianity. However little man may be aware of it or accept its credal implications, that is sheer historical fact. Its dominant principles and aspirations have been derived directly or indirectly, 6 from the Christian beliefs about God and man. Every society rests upon a dogma, explicitly or implicitly acknowledged. All that is most vital in the Western heritage has been sustained by the dogmas of Christendom. It springs from the unseen background of values and allegiances which are not of this world. When these are forgotten or repudiated, the legacy itself is in mortal peril. Thus, in whatever new forms it may clothe itself, the relationship between the Church and the State, or at least between religion and politics, is the over-riding issue of the post-war world.

Another issue vital for contemporary civilisation was presented by Jacques Maintain, the French philosopher, in a lecture delivered in Paris shortly before lhe outbreak of war, in which he said: —

The question now is whether the people of the countries which are still free are capable of attaining, by the paths of .liberty and of the spirit, a sufficient moral unanimity, and whether they are capable of resisting the adulterations which threaten their very conscience from within. Each time that someone in any country cedes to some infiltration of the totalitarian spirit, under any form whatsoever, undei any disguise, one battle for civilisation has been lost. The question is whether or not, in the face of an unprecedented loosing of pagan violence and of all the means which draw strength from the degradation of the human being, we understand the need of going back to the first source o± spiritual energies.

How these great issues will be decided is a matter of interest to every living person. The old basis of civilisation is being challenged; it is being challenged by a substitute civilisation based upon, a materialist philosophy. lhe world’s thinkers are divided on the conflicting merits of the old and the new, and the people whom they profess to lead are equally bewildered and uncertain. This contemporary conflict has been presented in a variety of ways, but the Bishop of Southwell seemed close to the truth when he wrote:—“The real dividing line in the world to-day is no longer between the Left and the Right: it is the division between a religions and secular interpretation of the nature and destiny of man. Although it makes no theatrical claim to attention, this is the great conflict, and it is one in which all the lesser though more clamorous issues are involved.