WORLD’S PEACE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3527, 18 October 1921, Page 20

WORLD’S PEACE.

PRESIDENT HARDING'S IDEAL. MESSAGE TO PRESS CONGRESS. WASHINGTON, October 11. President Harding despatched a. letter in connection with the opening of the Press Congress at Hawaii, in the course of which he said : If your deliberations shall inspire a larger, a better, and a more humane view of the elements which enter into the problems of peace and measurable disarmament, and if you can encourage the ideal of a world permanently at peace, then you will have given a vast impetus to the efforts of the statesmen who will preccntlv consider these problems at Yv’ashington. The Pacific ought to be the seat of generous, open-minded competition between the best ideals of Eastern and Western life. The President issued a warning against propaganda, and added: “Democracy lias pome to its great trial. The verdict will depend largely upon its capacity to make men think.” He said that he hoped the Washington Conference would result in | the maintenance of world peace. Concerning the Pacific, he said: We have heard much in recent years of the problem of the Pacific, whatever that may be. I take.it to be merely a phase of the universal problems of the race of men and of nations, wherever they are. It is hard to imagine justification in this day and age, especially in view of the world’s late unhappy experiences, for armed conflict, among civilised peoples anywhere, and especially among peoples so widely separated as those on the opposite borders of the Pacific. They represent different races, political systems, and models of thought. There may well be between them raid their widely varying systems amicable competition to determine which community possesses better and more effective ideas for human advancement; but that warfare should interfere is almost unthinkable.