Timely Topics

Northern Advocate, 27 October 1938, Page 6

Timely Topics

“Everyone in the course of his own life,” said Sir John Simon at Birmingham, “is sometimes faced with the difficulty of remov-

PROBLEM OF . ing causes of RECONCILIATION, differences between himself

and a former friend, or perhaps of trying to bring two people together who are mutually suspicious and resentful. There is only one way to do that. It is to strive to put oneself in the other man’s position, and to try to understand his point of view. It may well be that one is convinced that all the fault is on the other side, and that our own behaviour has been just and fair throughout. Probably the other party, rightly or wrongly, thinks the same about his conduct. Reconciliation is difficult, but no reconciliation is possible in any other ivay. If this is so between two Eng- ; lishmen in a matter of private differences, how much more difficult it is when the distrust and suspicion ex- | ist between curselyes and a foreign | country speaking another language, - inheriting different'-"traditions, proud !of a quite different system of gov- x ’ernment. Yet the need for exploring whether reconciliation is possible is all the greater, and that cannot be done without seizing the opportunity ho meet and discuss.” IS 0 S'®

“The trouble ,says the Rev, J. D. Jones, the eminent Congregational minister) is that the kind of resolutions many of our PEACE church assemblies RESOLUTIONS, pass do not help the cause of peace at all. The only persons they really help are the dictators. “I remember well the Way in which a leading member of the Cabinet—and a deeply Christian man—said to me that the resolutions our assemblies passed did not promote the cause of peace, but simply damaged it. For* they were telegraphed across to the dictators, who came to the conclusion that they stood in no danger of interference, by Britain, that they could entirely disregard Britain, and that they cbuld pursue their policies of aggression without the risk of any opposition from Britain. It is rather a terrifying, thought that our peace resolutions may be, in a measure, responsible for the outrage on Abyssinia. Anyhow, I will venture to say that Lord Davies with his advocacy of a court of equity, backed by an international police force, is doing far more to further the cause of peace than church assemblies do by passing extreme resolutions which do not represent the mind of the more responsible men and which certainly do not represent the mind of the rank and file of Christian people.”