THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21983, 19 June 1933, Page 9

THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —Let us rejoice that the Mayor of the city has been impelled to appeal to the public for assistance in relief of the distress which is assuming unpleasant prominence. The Mayor informs us that children are starving and that hundreds have been turned away because supplies have run out. That is an amazing situation in the richest country upon God's earth, and it is still more amazing when we find that the parties responsible claim to be Christians-—and British at that. What account will the great body comprising the Christian Church give when arraigned before the throne of God in explanation of the failure to defeat Mammon. For, clearly, the cause is greed and lust for money, prophetically explained centuries ago to be the root of all evil. How can the Church escape condemnation when it fails to support justice, fails to support reforms, which are the only means by which justice can be established, fails to explain the superior claim of religion compared with the claims of science, which is merely positive material knowledge utilised mechanically in wealth production and money-making ventures, to the detriment of human welfare? How can human welfare be promoted apart from a knowledge of God's law? No statesman can solve unemployment without Christian ethics, and no one can understand Christian ethics without a scientific explanation which the Church has failed to give. If Christianity is to be the salvation of humanity it must be applied to all human activities, particularly that of money making, wherein the most subtle and cultured refinement form a cloak for disguising the real aim of

the high financier who is the culprit responsible for the world's economic calamity. Let all Christians awake from their slumber. When children become the victims of want because the father is deprived of the opportunity tc earn his living, God shows us His wrath, and how "the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children to the third and fourth generation." Enslaved to money lenders, bound hand and foot, the human race is doomed for a century of bondage to repay debts incurred by unscrupulous politicians. Let not the Christian deceive himself by the delusive arguments that only international argument can solve the problem. What-, has international argument to do with feeding our own population with the product of our own labour? We produce more food per head of population than any other country in the world, but possess no intelligent understanding how it is to be equitably distributed. As no country outside of New Zealand is in possession of a system for solving the problem, how can an international argument provide a solution when it is not a question of international exchange' at all, but purely a local question? We are not concerned with solving problems in other countries, and other countries are not able to tell us how we are to solve ours._ Hence no gain can accrue from international argument. Actually the problem is financial and can be settled by the controlling agents locally concerned, provided the purpose of production is agreed upon. 'This is the part requiring a full explanation involving Christian ethics, the absence of which is the invisible cause of all our trouble.— I am, etc., i W. SIVERTSEW.;