Kaitaia Public Library

Northland Age, Volume 1, Issue 9, 4 December 1931, Page 7

Kaitaia Public Library

Notes on New Books THE WORLD OUR NEIGHBOUR, by Vincent Bartlett. A plain straight-forward review of the position of the world in 1931, and the questions political, social and economic—that are pressing for settlement. The author is a journalist who has travelled extensively, fought all through the war, and thought much over his experiences, has a shrewd eye and a telling, humorous pen. Readers of the book will get a clear, well-informed view of the world outlook. In his final chapter, ‘Quo Vadimus?’ he says : “People say that war can not be prevented, so we need not do anything about it. They did not talk in that spirit in August, 1914. There was a job to do and they did it. There is still that job to finish, and it is left for us to finish it. It is part of the same job, but a less exciting, less inspiring part of it ; it is the same old job of protecting our families, our towns and our villages, our civilisation. If you go to Ypres or anywhere behind these old trenches now, you will find cemetery after cemetery, with row after row of plain simple tombstones. All these fellows —British, French, German, Belgian, American—died when they were trying to do this job, and it is pretty shabby behaviour towards them to say we can do nothing to prevent another war, that the League of Nations is of no good, that all the sacrifices these men made were for nothing, that their children will have to be shelled just as they were, gassed just as they were, left under waterproof sheets in some back trench to await burial just as they were. Is it not worth an effort to stop all that sort of thing? We thought we could stop it on Armistice Day twelve years ago, and, if we thought we could, we can.

“We fought the last war to get a lasting peace. Another war would destroy everything about our country —all our countries that we hold dear. We have set up law courts and a police force to stop individuals from making themselves a public nuisance and a public danger. Sooner or later we will do the same sort of thing in communities. When, will depend upon each one of us as individuals, and upon the extent to which we learn to tolerate and understand the man whose language, ideas, upbringing and culture differ from ours. But in a world where men have learnt to measure the heart-beats of a leaf, to soar in the sky, to use words, chords and colour in such a way as to show God, it is impossible to believe that there is lacking the power to settle our difficulties without trying, through war, to prove the old lie that might is right.”