ADMIRAL BYRD STATESMAN & PROPHET

Grey River Argus, 24 March 1947, Page 7

ADMIRAL BYRD STATESMAN & PROPHET

WELLINGTON, March 19.

“Freedom the world over is on the defensive,’’ declared Rear-Admiral Richard E. Byrd. He was speaking at a public reception in his honour in Wellington. “Mankind is threatened with enslavement by the lopsided application of its own creative genius. The human race has destroyed its isolation before it is ready for integration.”

Admiral Byrd is not only a great explorer: he is also statesman and prophet. The quiet, lonely Antarctic is evidently a good place for thinking. Nor has Bryd limited his attention to scientific problems. Even closer to his heart is the predicament of a world that has grown up intellectually, but failed to grow up morally.

“Transportation and communication,” he says, "have now shrunk the world and made neighbours of the nations.” Byrd himself has always fought for international understanding. In these days when a resolute campaign to split the British Commonwealth and America apart is being made by those who would fasten a materialistic ideology on the world, Byrd has been one of the greatest ambassadors for America in the Commonwealth. He has endeared himself to all New Zealanders by his warmth, generosity and tact. “Our destinies',” he said in Wellington on Thursday, "because we love liberty and come from the same stock, have got to go along parallel lines. Anything we have to do in Antarctia, so far as have to do in Antarctia, so far as be along the lines of the ambitions and the welfare of the great destiny of New Zealand.”

His Message to New Zealand

Before leaving Washington by air to take command of the American task force in the Antarctic, RearAdmiral Bryd appealed te his country “to find that re-direction in human nature that can make the atomic age an age men will hail with gratitude, not with fright.” The statement, issued by the United States Navy Department, continues: "It is about six years since I returned from my last trip to the Antarctic. Often amid clash and cruelty on battle-fronts or the bitter tension of struggle on the industrial fronts, I have wished participants Would go to the end of the world and look from that perspective on the petty divisions that may wreck our planet. “On my former visit to the Antarctic continent I spent a period of several months alone during the dark night. During that time I came to,the conclusion that world organisation for peace was essential for humanity’s future. Now the United Nations Organisation has been created, it deserves our fullest support, but it is only too obvious that machinery depends on the men who run it and those they represent.”

An Inspired Ideology for Democracy

Byrd’s answer is an inspired ideology for democracy. He believes we need a fighting faith to create the spirit that will make our interration',■l machinery work and set freedom on the march again. "There are,” he says, “various philosophies abroad in the world to-day which aim to cure the world's ills' by a re-arrangement of the existing order. But we need a new factor —a new spirit in human nature itself. Therefore we should give special priority to any agency which shows promise on a world scale of bringing this about. A world force, which, from my personal observation, I believe is building an organic life within and between the United Nations, is Moral Re-arma-ment. It is making the old truths' of Christianity militant in this ideological era. It is the tight of every man who wants to save freedom.”

Industrial International Teamwork

The Moral Rearmament movement, to which Bryd refers, was active during the war years in bringing teamwork between managment and labour and raising industrial production in America and Britain. Their industrial drama, “The Forgotten Factor”, called by President Truman "the rnose important play produced by the war”, was tal-:en' to the principal industrial centres of labour and management. The head of a West Coast 70,000-strong aircraft union said, "There are planes on the fighting fronts that wouldn’t have been there but for the work of Moral Rearmament.” Dr. John R. Steelman, head of the United States Conciliation Ser--vice, called the M.R.A. workers .“the most effective single force for industrial teamwork in the country.” The Nazis, who had to reckon with Floral Rearmament in Norway and other occupied countries, were well aware of its threat to totalitarian ideas. In a 69-page Gestapo report on tlie work in Europe they condemn the movement, as “the Christian garment for world democratic aims, ’ and "the National State’s Christian opponent” This M.R.A. group are at present working on such problems as juvenile delinquency in America, coal production in Britain and international reconciliation in Europe. The first •post-war European Assembly for Moral Rearmament at Caux, Switzerland, was attended by 1500 representatives from 31 nations. Comparing it with the Paris Peace Conference, Mr Ronald Chamberlain, British M.P.. said, "This assembly at Caux will have, in the long run, a larger and more lasting effect through the world.” Unity of Humanity The germ of the philosophy is Admiral Bryd’s “new factor—a new spirit in human nature itself.” Moral Rearmament offers, says Peter Howard, author of the bestseller “Ideas Have Legs,” “the superforce of a God-given dynamic spirit to bring the unity of humanity, which is the only answer to the split atom and without which no international organisation, however well prepared, will work.” Byrd translates this into simple practical terms. He says: “Not everyone can spend five months alone but each can spqnd at least five minutes a day to allow the pressure of events to give way to the guidance of God. In this way the ordinary man and the statesman can supply the inspired thinking that will fulfil the aspirations of democracy. The rediscovery of our national faith is more important than anything I mav find on these new explorations of the Antarctic.”