CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOUR.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19904, 25 September 1926, Page 19

CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOUR.

MR LLOYD GEORGE’S APPEAL. "GET RTD OF THE IDEA OF WAR.” (From Opr Own Cobhespondent.) LONDON, July 30. Mr Lloyd George addressed delegates from more than 30 nations assembled at the Crystal Palace for the seventh world convention of the Christian Endeavour Movement, his subject being “The Youth of the World for Peace and Goodwill.” “When the war spirit comes,” ho said, “it sweeps all ages and all classes. It is pot, therefore, because youth is less combative than age that we are making our appeal to-day, but for other reasons. All suffer in wars. Very often those who never take any part in the fighting suffer the most. The deepest, the most poignant, the most incurable wounds of the war have been suffered by those who never ’ fought in it, but who lost those dear to them who did take part. And therefore all classes, oil ages, are interested in peace. But the reason why we appear to the young especially is because the future is with the young. Each generation has its task, and the supreme task of the generation that is arising now, and which is commencing its work in life, is to achieve the substitution of organised justice for organised violence. “We old fellows have got our psychological arteries hardened, and we arc not supple enough to adapt ourselves to new ideas. We were brought up and have Jived in a world that regarded human slaughter with occasional wars as part of the grim essence of human civilisation. We have not got away from that. During my lifetime there has been six or seven great wars, including the greatest that has ever been waged, and we have not got away from the idea that somehow or other, disagreeable as it may be, repellent, cruel, ruthless, it is just as much part of the machinery of civilisation as prisons and scaffolds. Youth must get away from that idea. If it does not, then I warn you that the last war is not the greatest that will be waged. The most horrible, the most devastating, is still yet to come, unless youth- tears that idea from the heart of civilisation. THE CHURCHES AND STRIKES. “It is true between nations; it is true between classes —capital and labour. You must get rid of the notion that you can only settle disputes by an appeal to force. Whether it is guns and rifles and cannon, or strikes and lockouts, they arc all part of the barbarism of the past. “There ought to be some peaceable means of ensuring justice between nations and between classes, and if I may say so— I must take care not to say anything controversial—l am delighted that the churches in their intervention in our recent dispute have secured for the first time from the most powerful trade union in this land the acceptance of the principle of arbitration.” It was a great achievement, he added, for the churches of Christ in this land. He did not agree with the people who said it was none of the business of Christian churches to interfere. - ‘I wish to God that they had interfered in 1914,” he said, amid cheers. There were greater armies in Europe to-day than ever before. The United States and ourselves entered into a disarmament arrangement, in 1921 ho thought it was, which was one of the finest achievements of modern times in disarmament, but we were gradually being cast back. “Europe had been drinking of armaments until it got delirium tremens in 1914,” concluded Mr Lloyd George, “and it is going on drinking secretly now. Youth must take it in hand. The present is theirs, and the future Is even more assuredly theirs.”