HOW IS OPINION CHANGING?

New Zealand Times, Volume XLII, Issue 9619, 27 March 1917, Page 2

HOW IS OPINION CHANGING?

Mr H. Q. Wells, writing in "a London newspaper on the tragic process of the war, notes the change of opinion that is going on. He asks. How is human opinion changing ? Being bored by war and hating war are unproductive. “It is no good for everyone to say unanimously ‘We will have no more war’ unless you have thought how to avoid it, and wean to bring that end about. It is as if everyone said, ‘We will have no more catarrh/ or ‘no more flies/ or ‘no more east wind/ And my point is that the immense sorrows at home in every European country and the vast boredom of the combatants are probably not really producing any effective remedial mental action at all, and will not do so unless we get much more thoroughly to work upon the thinkingout process. In such talks as I could get with men close up to the front I found, beyond this great boredom and attempts at distraction, only very specialised talk about changes in the future. Men were keen upon questions of army promotion, of the future of conscription; of tho future of the temporary officer; upon the education of boys in relation to army needs. But the war itself was hearing them all upon its way, as unquestioned and uncontrolled as if it were the planet on* which they, lived,”