HUMANISING WAR

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23067, 18 June 1938, Page 14

HUMANISING WAR

The debate in the House of Commons on the question of "humanising by common agreement the rules and practices of war" ended inconclusively, as it was bound to do. That is because it is as impossible to humanise what is utterly inhuman as to get bread out of a Btone. Inefvitably, in view of the terrible happenings daily in China and Spain, the Commons debate tended to concentrate on air warfare. Here again it is doubtful whether Britain's willingness to abandon police bombing would materially assist progress toward an effective convention. Indeed those who have studied the whole question thoroughly seem to be agreed that nothing less than the universal abolition of aircraft, civil as well as military, would be sufficient to reduce the winged menace. Such a course has been seriously advocated by two such authorities as Professor J. Husband, president of the British Institution of Structural Engineers, and Major-General A. C. Temperley, formerly military adviser at the War Office and to the British delegation to the League of Nations. The very fact that such responsible men should advise total abandonment of an invention that has so many highly useful and beneficent applications in peace shows their despair of controlling its exploitation in war. But if aircraft were totally abolished, blue prints (and perhaps shadow factories) would still remain. Moreover other military weapons, including gas, would be left untouched. The fact is that resolutions and conventions, prohibitions of this and abolitions of that, will prove vain so long as man himself remains unregenerate. Humanising must begin in the hearts and minds of individuals. Lasting reforms are not political, but spiritual.