WAR AND CHRISTIAN BELIEF

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23945, 21 October 1939, Page 16

WAR AND CHRISTIAN BELIEF

TO THE EDITOR Sir, —“ Maran-atha’s ” letter under the above heading is a typical product of what you might expect from a person of the orthodox mind welded to an economic system which must inevitably lead us to war. He quotes, “ What is right on the face of ft is right and what is wrong on the face of it is wrong.” This appeal to the herd instinct means that we must say “ amen ” and follow blindly whither we are led. Personally. I am unable to accept this dictum. I would like “ Maran-atha ’’. to face up to the reality that it is only by intensive and costly preparatjon for war that money can now be got into the pockets of the people. It is only by getting money into the people’s pockets in this way that the bankers and their hirelings are enabled to point to an improvement in employment conditions, and ask the people to renew their confidence in the present policy.

And so the world’s economic system to-day can only function upon a condition of increasing war preparation, can only thrive upon lashing national antipathies into hatred, can only operate at all because of the “ blood money ” created by the international vampires and advanced to the supine Governments throughout the world, which have surrendered their sovereign rights to a group of financial jackals who know no country but who prey on all countries. That our precious system tickc over even fitfully is a fact for which we owe obsequious gratitude to the two distended Josses who control money and steel. Under the social system ordained by their evil genius, the only way we can ever hone to know prosperity, faded though she is, is by hovering always upon the brink of war —red and ruthless. What a basis oq which to build a civilisation!—l am, etc Light.

[A discussion which leads to the expression of such views as are indicated in the above letter must be closed.—Ed. O.D.T.]