UNFINISHED VICTORY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23618, 30 March 1940, Page 10

UNFINISHED VICTORY

The last peace was not worthy of the men who died to win it. For it did not endure, and therefore robbed them of their victory, writes Mr. Arthur Bryant, the historian, in hi.s new book "Unfinished Victory." There are some wiio. faced by a second world war in a generation, almost feel that it might have been better had we exterminated our enemies in 1910 and so ended for ever the menace of German aggression. That would at least have been a logical policy. But for Britons it would never have been a practicable one and never will be. Since we would not bring ourselves to destroy the German people, and could only have permanently broken up Germany by such destruction, the only sensible course was to make a peace based on the proposition that we had got, for good or ill, to inhabit the same world. We had taught a bully by hard knocks, as wo are now having to teach him again, the lesson that force without morality does not paj\ Had we been content with that —had we been true to tbe old-fashion of England in letting our enemy rise and giving him our hand—we might not now be having to repeat the work of 191 1-18 a second time. In our anxiety, or that of our allies, to delay the day of Germany's recovery as long as possible, we undid the whole worth of our lesson by teaching a contradictory one—that only by force and violence was she ever likely to free herself from the painful shackles in which we had bound her. For a moment it mattered little, since she was powerless. But we forgot that the will of our own people to keep her so would not last for ever, and that presently, true to our tradition and forgetting of past aggression, we should tire of sitting on an injured and revengeful Germany's head and let her rise. In the fullness of time, as was inevitable, we did so. If we repeat the mistake of 1919 we shall probably do so again. "Magnanimity in polities is not seldom the truest wisdom." It is always so for Englishmen.

PONTIUS PILATE OR CLAUDIUS? When Christ was brought to trial before Pilate, the Roman Governor was clear that lie had not committed any capital crime. But he nevertheless yielded to the clamour of the priestly faction that Christ should be put to death,'because if he had not done so "a tumult" would have resulted, writes Viscount Cecil. Probably Pilate acted from motives of cowardice and selfinterest. But. would his action have been more defensible if he had merely thought that a tumult must be avoided as being wrong in itself? Compare this with the action of Claudius Lysias in coining with an "army"' to the rescue of St. Paul from a similar hierarchical outburst. Not only did he do this, but lie sent Paul to Caesar,ea under the escort of a. considerable body of soldiers ready, if necessary, to defend him with their weapons. Has any Christian moralist ever maintained that in these two instances Pilate was right and Claudius Lysias was wrong? No doubt these were not questions of war properly so called. But surely the distinction between civil disturbances and war cannot be sustained. The moral character of the operations cannot bo altered by calling one species of military proceedings police action, and another war. The plain truth is that the use of force is not wrong in itself, but is wrong or right according to the motives and circumstances which accompany it. This is the only sound principle, whether one is dealing with individual or national affairs. If the surgeon can show that his operation was necessary to save life or the officer is driven to throw back a drowning man into the sea in order to prevent the destruction of a boat-load escaping from a wreck, or if one nation resists by . force a cruel and wanton aggression on another —in each case the action taken is strictly in accordance with Christian principles.