FRIDAY, AUGUST 5, 1921. PEACE IDEALS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18316, 5 August 1921, Page 4

FRIDAY, AUGUST 5, 1921. PEACE IDEALS.

The Fourth of August lias lost much of the pregnant significance which it possessed during the strenuous and anxious years of the war. No longer is it the occasion of the assembling of men and women in all parts of the Empire in order to renew the solemn league and covenant of martial determination. The uses of Mr Asquith’s famous formula (“We shall not sheath the s\yord, which wo did not lightly draw, until . . . .”) belong to a

past which, as time goes on, will become less and less insistently vivid to tho retrospective mind. It was customary to allude to this date as “the great division of time.” Nowadays, there is perhaw* a too ready tendency

to question whether there was a really great epochal division, and to suggest half-cynically that everything is pretty mucn the same as it was seven years ago. People whose foible it is to expect all things in an hour arc fond of enlarging on the disappointments and disillusionments attending the results of the war. We are more concerned to emphasise the fact —sufficiently obvious, but insufficiently appreciated in some quarters —that thd war was won. It was well won, and well worth wining. The truism hardly needs an apology in view of the foolishly dismal looks which some visionary folks assume when they talk about the outcome of the great struggle. The main objects of the Allies —the salvage of free civilisation and the confounding of its Hunnish foe^ —were secured: that is, it seems to us, the salient consideration to be borne in mind, with thankful satisfaction, on every Fourth of August anniversary. That, and the resolve —not less earnest than the memorable resolves of the war period —to be alertly vigilant, each individual in his or her station, to help in safeguarding that immunity from unspeakable disaster which was won at such a heavy cost.

The greatest disaster of human origin that could face the world in the future would be the recurrence of war. The resolve to safeguard the liberties defended at such cost iu the recent struggle must find its practical outlet in a determination to assist every endeavour to make peace permanent and war impossible. Great though the problem that is to be confronted may be, it must be tackled, and who shall say that the joint forces of all the nations, or of the most influential of them, if brought into the requisite combination, are not capable of initiating a new era of international relationships and reasonableness? That is an ideal, but not necessarily a chimera. And if it is ever to be realised there must be a beginning of co-operative effort. That beginning finds its practical epibodiment in the League of Nations, which, whatever may be Said in its disparagement, undoubtedly offers the peace-loving and liberty-loving communities something definite to which to lend a support expressive of their abhorrence of war and of their recognition of appeals to the sword as suicidal and unworthy of peoples who boast of their civilisation. If the peoples of the earth could see clearly where their salvation lies, and could cast out doubt and apprehension, there would surely be a groat rallying, expressed in an irresistible public opinion, to the standard of the League of Nations. This organisation represents a movement which will prosper or not, according to the force that is behind it. The League of Nations Union stands for a practical endeavour to marshal to the League’s support all who see the need for its activities. The formation, at the meeting held in Dunedin on Wednesday night, of a branch of the League of Nations Union is a sign that the claims of the League to support have only to receive an adequate personal interpretation in our midst to elicit a gratifying response. We trust that the community at large will show an awakened interest in the question at issue. From that point of view it is perhaps to be regretted "that the local inception of the movement to form a branch of the League of Nations Union was not on a more comprehensive scale, the inauguration being made under the auspices of the Dunedin Presbytery, to which all credit is due for taking the initiative. But this is, of course, anything but a denominational matter, and the movement should interest and embrace all sections of the community, as, if we may judge from the personnel of the provisional committee, it ultimately will. This is a point of distinct importance, if this local organic sation, founded in the interests of a great cause, is to exercise the influence to be desired.