THE NATIONS IN 1934.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume VL, Issue 3149, 19 March 1934, Page 3

THE NATIONS IN 1934.

A THOUGHTFUL REVIEW. Tite world enters the year 1934, if riot with marked emergence from its troubles, at least with a greatly improved sense of their cause and of their cure, said the Christian Science Monitor of Boston, U.S.A, recently, in the course of a most thoughtful review of world events during the past three, vears. Three years of retarded motion and suffering have worn away false fronts. War no longer masquerades as the righteous sword of patriotism, but is recognised as the bludgeon of selfishness and hate. Competition is seen to he sometimes the life of trade, but more often the missing of rewards that co-operation could win. Material riches are no longer the synonym for substance, hut with their flight there has been inaugurated a more eager searching for something that could satisfy. The nations register the fact that they step off into the new year with hope and expectation. They have learned deep, bitter lessons with economic winter come upon the world —Spring, they venture to promise themselves, cannot be far behind.

The nations are able to discern at the close of 1933 the complete failure of the nationalism into which they rushed as a refuge from their troubles. Not one was able to protect itself from what was befalling the otheis. Tai iff walls and other restrictive barriers did not keep out the big, bad wolf, but merely provided him a quiet place in which to rear his brood. All the nations have learned that no nation can live alone; nearly all of them have suffered along to the point of being willing to consider the things that can bring about an actual get-together. At Geneva, London, Paris, Berlin, Rome and Washington utterance has been given to this developing willingness. And thus have been brought into sharp relief the things that always have kept men and nations apart. Nobody denies tlmm any longer and nobody can—They are selfishness and fear. Selfishness should not much longer be a wedge to ih v nations apart.

Fear is the chief obstacle preventing Ihc nations from flowing into a unity that could soon solvo their woes. This primordial, unreasoning fear argues that men dare not make common cause because there is not enough of the things they seek to go round. Yet the whole of human experience teaches that men in orderly unity find more, do moie have more than men who strive apart. Fear is able to imprison men and nations in the limitation thought only because they look to themselves and not to a higher source as the fountain of good. The privation years that have so forced men to get along without have given them more freedom to learn ,to love. There are few things that soften the human heart more surely than a common lack. Where there has been great lack there has come succour through the kindling of great love. This begins to open a way out for nations as for individuals—Perfect love casteth out fear/

The thinking man, like the nation, is looking to 1934 to bring him into an expanded sense of existence. Even though he admits that his hardships ■were in a measure brought about by himself, he claims the elevation that might be expected to follow a chastening patiently borne. Millions of persons would not again make the sacrifices once they made to acquire material possessions now swept away, hut are willing to devote energy and thought to finding a wav to reach things more actually valuable and more enduring.