CHRISTMAS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XLV, Issue 10464, 17 December 1919, Page 1 (Supplement)

CHRISTMAS.

(By R.AX.)

WELCOME! Father of the flowing beard of. white, of tin kindly eyes of blue, pf the red blood richly -pervading the lips and the cheeks of him 1 The first impression the sight of the renerable figure produces is of virility. It is the virility of the Old Tradition, showing itse r .f out of the welter of the Great "War. Ten millions of men have died, ten millions stand about the world crippled, ten millions carry scars and the memories of painful convalescence, softened by the tender recollections of the great sisterhood.of the divine cult of nursenood, which is the beautiful soft edg* of the mantle of healing worn by tb* doctors of the ' world, with the intrepidity of the soldier and the self-deny-ing endurance of the ascetic. Another memory most Bacred is o'. the religious ministering. ' It is a jibe of the cynic that your cannon-ball is the best preacher. Stuff and nonsense thi3 of the materialistic world.

It is up against the Main Fact dominating the whole field of. war. from the battlefield with its carnage, to the hospitals where despair and pain, are swept away by the untiring ministry of'faithful service. The main fact was that there was no preaching. The cannon" roared louder than any preacher, of course. But the mighty voice of it fell on ears of men tuned to the trumpet of martial duty, and braced by the determination of a great adventure 6trong*y imbued with the spirit of sacrifice in a great cause. The great voice of the artillery falling on deaf ears was not the voice of the preacher. It wa3 the voice of a great commander bidding bravery to stand to. i ■

What followed when men went down and were'carried to safety. by great comrades? It was not preaching. What was it? The typical figure of the Padre answers the question. Read its reoord of all colours. "Watch it flitting about among the stricken, moving swiftly in the open or in the houses and tents of suffering, stooping over the. maimed, dropping words of balm in the ear of agony, ministering according to the occasion. You will see it wa6 a wonderful performance-; Sut it was not preaching. The dead, the crippled, and the convalescent made up the" thirty million list of the casualties. They were framed in a great setting of cities destroyed, of countries devastated, of homes ruined, of every variety of' suffering possible to afflicted humanity. And tho aftermath of debt and reparation and reconstruction—one can only say that it appals the imagination of man with a cry of horror wide enough to embrace the world.

About thi3 aftermath there is a vast combat-of words, doubts, fears; representative "all, from the optimism of easy prediction to the despair of the blindest gloom. The wordy conflict, compelling and perplexing, suggests a ruined world struggling against mighty forces striving relentlessly to make worse the destruction of the mighty conflict which a year ago passed into tho most lurid page of history.

' But out of this mass of hurtling darkness comes the old light of the beautiful Old Season. It shines out of the virility of that great time. Tho rirility is unimpaired by the tremendous upheaval of the war. It made high appeal bdfore a shot was fired; it makes the same appeal after tho sound of tho last gun has died away in the folds of the Peace Treaty. If it owed anything to the -war, it would have disappeared with the lost cities, the trampled fields, the million lives, and the greater million of hopes. Owing nothing to the war, it uses tho war to strengthen .the •_ old appeal which has brightened the pages of tho Christmas calendar. Tho old Father of tho venerable white beard and thft kindly bine eyes, and tho. rich N red blood in his cheeks, has spoken peace always, urged goodwill, insisted on tho only foundation fit to carry tho happiness and welUbcing of God's world. Hie message has been honoured always with much joy and somo practical goodness most beneficial and iipliftinjr. But the answer hns lacked bo much, that it stands manifestly incomplete.- "So war or brittle sound"

thing. There was no sign of either on the first Christmas Day. But can it bo said of any other ? Even to-day there is, despite the Treaty which ended the Great War, much sound of battlo.

But the original messago was insistent for a peace permanent, .widespread, firmly buttressed against all possible violent disturbance, not less firmly braced against 'internal convulsion. It was based on the only possible peace securing law, the law which finds expression in the "Sermon on the Mount,'' and applies to the well-tbeing of nations as .well as of individuals. To break that, law is to in* cur the punishment of law-breaking. Ignoring of the law on the civil side has brought about the catastrophe of the "Submerged Tenth." Active disobedience by violence has been' followed by the horrors of war. These latter, for all their large writing in history, proved no deterrents. The Great War has made appalling additions to thait evidence of the consequences of neglect. Will the addition prove effective? It is the energetia contention of Father Christmas that ii ranat. To hear that contention and abey must now be the main work of the world. "

' And what of the submerged Ten'th, representing the penalty for neglect o.i the civil side? That maAter was put out of sight by the war, and after the war it stands where it did as a claimant for redress. ; It does not, however, stand alone. On the contrary, its difficulties are flanked now by the difficulties loft by the war. The two together constitute the great problem of reconstruction. The war has left us with double the burden of work we had before, and less means for dealing with it. That is the sum total in brief of our problem of reconstruction. - The arithmetic of it is that we have doubled our national debt and more than doubled our national problem.

The Old Peacemaker of the three colours smiles .on us radiantly nevertheless. "You and your hoary old .British parent/' says he, "carry the same colours; my colours. Both have the samo problem, too. How's that for all right between blood relations?" Before anyone can murmur, Old Benevolence goes on to give the cheery assurance that if we have' doubled our debt, they over there have increased theirs by over twelve times, and as for their prob'.om of reconstruction, they don't know how much they have multiplied it. lit does not mend our case, but it docs prove convincingly that our case might have been worse by a great deal. As for Franco and Bolgium, they are too deop in the aftermath of war to be mentioned. Worse I We might well have been. The point is useful when one considers what it might have been for us had Germany won the war. "Buck up!" says tho Old Father, find he rings truo. Ail the politicians in the election say the same —there is no need to labour the point. "Buck uip," be it. Trust in tho resources of God's Own Country, and the pluck of' a self-reliant people. Who is "to lead this "Buck up" policy? The electors of "God's On*n" have taken up the point. Let us here leave it to them Say no more—we want no war or battle sound to-day.

Looking' into' the future, we must use the brave eyes of tho Old Optimistic Father. Looking far out we see the world a welter of difficulties—"wars in tho East, rumours of wars in the Middle Europe'; Bolshevists, Spartacists, Socialists of all denominations and colours, fantastic, sober, chimerically unpractical, or of wickedly de T structive aim. In this welter the groat form of tho League of Nations which is to safeguai-d tho meek-oyed peace for ever, smiling and flourishing tho horn of plenty, seems to bo prostrate, with all strength oozing out of its helpless gaping pores. This welter (Lacs not justify our prediction made twelve months ago with the inspiration of tho Peacemaker of the P»od, White, and Blue. But tho hardy veteran maintains his virility with a smi'e broader than ever. Uca t -'ou:i'.)!c voices on all sides of the welter are rising, dominating.

waitings of the hopeless. Especially notable is an American voice warning tho murderous assailant of the Great League of Nations that tho great American nation is the friend of that power of peace, and will not brook any more stabbing by the points of factious pins. Let us leave them to it. Humanity is just now in tho ascendant in the place usurped by the inhuman diplomacy of old, and that fake god, first lieutenant of tho Moloch of War, is sinking below tho welter of the world. Let us watch hopefully. Hope is one of tiho great' human qualities. It is dominating the democratic mind, and tho democratic mind is dominating humanity. For tho first time,' tjiero is hope for humanity, and its base is human reason guided by righteousness and' justice. Leaving the world to this reasonable hopefulness, let us turn our thoughts inward, to listen once more tx> the voices tho Old Father brings with him, of peace in all things, concord bebn-een men, justice of the even hand, and the child of a'.l these, which is content. This time all the voices must be heard and heeded. Should they ho so, tho great problem of reconstruction, though pressing heavily on our shoulders, will 'affect us no more than the weight of the„ thistledown, leaving the limits of us to move with hopeful energy, and the feet of us lo trend lightly and firmly the pattl of progress. ,