THE PRICE OF WAR

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21716, 3 February 1934, Page 14

THE PRICE OF WAR

Sir, —The war financially was a costly thing. Morally, its price is beyond reckoning. It is suggested by what we all too frequently find mentioned in the press of our Dominion crimes of violence occurring in such numbers now-a-days, as were scarce found in a generation of years previous to the war. The significance of this is clear. Psychologically, the war through its carnage, slaughtering, maiming and wounding, has taught tho rising generation to esteem tho value of life most lightly. For a liko reason, impurity ever "the concomitant of war has dragged the sanctity of life in the mire of sex wantonness. So much for New Zealand. Look over the Tasman Sea! In Sydney, uniting two of its shoros is a great and beautiful structural bridge, yet it has been remarkably and grievously diverted from its use to be made a means for suicide. At the basis of tho tragic urgency which leads its viiv tiins to death, is surely the conception, of the lightness, the worthlessness of life. Here, again, the war psychologically yet tragically speaks of its price. Surely the time must coino soon, if it is not here already, when war must be absolutely cut out of national experience. Would it were possible that our English-speaking world, America and Britain, with any other nations, determining to stand by them, should unitedly declare that from a certain date, they should hot add one gun to their armaments, not a ship to their navies, not a man to their armies, and take the risk! Such venture should be all the more possible, if the plan of France for an international police force were adopted, consisting of units from every nation in the Lcagua of Nations, and without it, put under authority of the world's court of arbitration, and in association with the League. Are we, then, paying too much for war! James Milne.