BRITISH TRADITION.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 46, 23 January 1936, Page 8

BRITISH TRADITION.

PEACE-MAKING INFLUENCE. Rabbi Levy addressed the. Sydney Legacy Club recently on the power of British tradition to reconcile racial and other animosities within a community, and instanced, particularly, its success in South Africa. There never was a time, Rabbi Levy said, when discord between nations more gravely imperilled the world and when hostility between sections of the one nation was more marked. It served no good purpose to attempt to obliterate forcibly differences of outlook between jarring sections within a community. The great need and the great difficulty was to bring these differences into one great harmonious synthesis. It was in this that the British tradition had been so successful, and offered such a shining example to the world. < “I lived for ten and a-half years in South Africa,” he said, “and had the opportunity of studying the acute communal problems they have there—problems which Australians, living in a predominantly British atmosphere. can barely grasp. There are differences between British and Boer, greatly accentuated by the efforts of the Boers to advance a distinct culture through the Afrikaans language. Both Boer and British find their interests conflicting with those of the native Zulu and Bantu peoples, but have opposing views of the problem. The racial differences are further accentuated by the presence of Indians, and, lastly, there are the people of mixed descent, whose condition is often pitiful. “It was a wonderful tribute to British statesmanship that, after the Boer War, in a community so divided, the erstwhile foes of Britain, Botha ajid Smuts, threw themselves into the work <' r making a success of British South Africa, and it is to their immortal glory that, when the Great War broke out, they stood solidly behind the British Empire, and averted what was very nearly a great catastrophe for South Africa.” The example of South Africa, Rabbi Levy declared, was only one of many which demonstrated that it was only on the British model that they could work for peace. “Behold, we were binding sheaves in the field,” said Joseph. That was the British way—to unite and reconcile, to bring differences into a synthesis, and it behoved ex-service-men, especially, to further that work of peace and conciliation.