SOLDIERS NOT WARMONGERS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23321, 13 October 1937, Page 12

SOLDIERS NOT WARMONGERS

“It is lawful,” says the liturgy of the Anglican Church, “for Christian men, at the commandment of the magistrate, to bear arms and serve in the wars.” It is sweet and fitting, runs the old Latin saying, to die for one’s country. When we teach generc-us youth, so eager for an ideal that is not purely materialist —the only kind offered it to-day by Communist and capitalist alike—these ancient lessons of morality, writes Mr Arthur Bryant in the London Observer, we may find it easier to fill the ranks of the little voluntary army we expect to fight our battles. We shall not, by doing so, as is commonly and falsely supposed, be any the more likely to drift into needless wars. The soldier and the warmonger are not the same person; the one suffers in war to further his country’s purpose; the other makes wars to further his own. It is not honest Colonel Blimp who is clamouring for a world-war at this very hour, but yesterday’s professional pacifists who want to ensure the victory of the Socialist and Communist horses they have so recklessly backed on the Continent, and care little what suffering they may cause to others in their attempt to achieve it.