THE RIGHT ROAD TO PEACE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22777, 10 July 1937, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE RIGHT ROAD TO PEACE

Ar riving Unaware By MATANGA HOW far should peace be made an object of human endeavour] This old question, so old that nobody can say when it was first met, is in" these days very, much alive. It is put anew by the tense situation in Europe. After, twelve months of the horrible and scandalous war in Spain, the' NonIntervention Committee has found n0 easy answer. Mr. Eden, speaking in the Commons this week, was facing it squarely yet had no simple -formula of solution to offer. Geneva j ias been continually perplexed by jt. Disarmament proposals have faltered before it. The truth is that there is no simple answer —at least, no answer so simple that it can be unthinkingly applied always and everywhere., Oiio infallible direction can bo given about the road to peace—"Take always the next turning to the right." The right road to any peace deserving the name is the road ot right; all others lead only to* miserable truces, worse than useless. Peacp,' be it said at once, is ever desirable. Is it, however, desirable as life's greatest, highest good:" To say it, is involves' an implied denial of tremendous moral verities. Let appeal be made to Holy Writ, wherein the comfort and loveliness of peace have explicit praise, and care for it is given honour; vet the kingdom of eternal pood is there described as "first pure, then' peaceable," and peace is declared to come "by righteousness," while the blessedness of the peacemakers is set amid joys of right-doing. Peacemaking, indeed, can be a merely weak and singling surrender of what is true and right and just. That is the terrible possibility besetting those to whom peace/is pre-eminently, uniquely dear, and' a direct goal of effort. Strange as it seems, they may be found fighting against God. Moral Considerations

Pence, it must further be acknowledged, is an essential condition of economic prosperity; but does this entitle it to supreme service? Are material considerations to have preference over moral? No man had stronger personal temptation to welcome "public qniet.'' than , Charles Dickens, but he did not hesitate to take up a sword of unpopular quarrel. "I am a Reformer heart and-soul : " he wrote of a particular cause, in an intimate privato letter; "I have nothing to gain—everything to lose (for public quiet is mv ' bread)—but I am in desperate earnest, because 1 know it is a desperate case." Deep in the heart of many good men < —perhaps-it is a mark of all men trulv pood—is a dread of peace. They do not love war, least of all the war that entails bloodshed and is of the earth earthy. They agree with General Sherman that war is hell. They do not blink

its horrors. They do not stop their ears • to its agonised cries. They do not steel ./ their heart? against itfs sorrow and pa in,--nor, refuse to. count J±K-,a wiwl post. Its cruelties have not passed them by, and they could not be callously cynical even if they-would. Its ravages have reached their hearths, carried ruthlessly away 'much that mattered more than themselves, and flung their best designs and, hopes into the hungry maelstrom of death. War's flames have scorched their souls as well as consumed their beloved. Yes, they will say, war is hell. But, in their estimation of moral rallies, it is' not the only hell; nor is it the nethermost pit. Its horrors are not unrelieved; and, frightful as it is, it is preferable to a peace that is craven and perfidious. a Conflict Our eyes get tired with the search for Eeace. We grow weary sweeping the orizon of the hours with our despairing hope. It is well that we should Buffer thus.''We have not learned the lesson of recent years if they have come and gone in such tantalising futility. Foolish and blind have we been if we have /Continued to think of life in terms of ease. What, after all, is life? There is a peace of death, maybe; but life knows nothing of peace save as is lost all that makes it life. Struggle is its soul and sign.

Our entry into life sped us to a con- , flict in which the regenerative powers of our physique are normally at grips with menacing death. Forces of destruction seek to tear us cell from cell, and the best we can do is to hold these forces at ba'V until weary age unbolts ; the portcullis; then they rush across the drawbridge and make such havoc of our outworn strength of tower and beauty of palace that the kindliest care is to 'cover with earth our despoiled ruins or reduce them to ashes with a cleansing flame. Thus of the body—born to conflict, dead when ,that ceases. What of the mind? Where the mind is really alive 110 peace can fully come. Reverie may have tranquillity, but thought never. Blood is the price of admiralty in the intellect. Foes—ignorance, indolence, doubt—lurk in the pathway of the pi Ir grim thinker. We may make truce with 'them, but this is to lose intellectual life altogether. No Walled Garden See how man makes himself a place of habitation in the earth. He dwells in no walled and perfect garden, needing never a care. Instead, he has to carve a dwelling among the rocks or cut a hiding-place in the thicket; and when his first needs are thus valiantly -met." he carries on the fight until he the desert blossom as the rose. He finds t strange forces all about jnin,' fascinating yet rebellious, withi nfe and dent.li in their twin hands. Jnev beckon and they obstruct, they tßrnpt and terrify, until he tames them. Jnon, the siren become a servant, waitln2 on him with light and power, he is ©salted; nevertheless, eternal vigilance ls still the price of his mastery. Let "'it the least carelessness betray him, sml his liveried retinue will take savage toll v ■ Man's dominion in the earth .means a warfare from which there is no discharge. . And is it not so with the life of his inmost soul? Oulv in his enduranco can he possess it. - i| an , "ian would hp ir'l'j "ill t tie rill pi re of himself; in it n„ "Csupreme, establishing his throne vanqiiNlifd .will, (iiiollinz tlw anarchy of H«; " n l, lfs i»n<l fours— Hp »is? himself alone 11 10 principle has travelling ritrhts throughout human experience. Whnt- . ©tor be the destined quarry of the {V lm ? n nnest. it is not peace. Uather is holy grail of life's puissant search juled with the blood of painful sacrifice. The most splendid charge to ©firth's knigiit-errants is "Seek ve first 8 Kingdom where right is done in scorn •i. M consequence." aim at peace is to miss it. It is by-product of the nood. In this truth yL.connsel for to-dav's hopes and fears. V hen the Great War was approaching end President Wood row Wilson poke.plain words about "the new inr 'Cue, the intricue for peace." They V, ® ( '-scant heed. That is why there was : P©ace after the peace. And to-day, Wa + s,lrf> '- v - to think most of'mere „*» s to end a war will be a poor ser- . • ,- VlCe to the world.