WAR IN THE FUTURE

Patea Mail, Volume XLIII, 1 August 1919, Page 2

WAR IN THE FUTURE

SIR DOUGLAS HAIG’S VIEWS No more interesting rectorial address has ever boon made than that of Sir Douglas Haig on his installing as Rector of St. Andrew’s University. Sir Douglas’s record in the war entitles him above most men to look forward to the possibilities of wars in the future, and to means of preventing such wars.

“If we wish to avoid a repetition of such catastrophes,” said the great soldier, “we must be prepared actively to prevent them, and must know what course to pursue. “Although for a while they may lie dormant, the passions from which war springs are not yet caged in the heart of man. The seeds of future conflict arc to be found in every quarter of the globe.

“Unequal standards of living, wide differences of civilisation in different parts of the globe and the economic pressure which must result therefrom; racial and colour antipathies —all these force me to the conclusion that struggles still more terrible are in store for this earth unless wise and decisive action is taken -to remove the causes.

“Among possibilities of strife there is the problem which newspaper and novel writers have called the ‘Yellow Peril,’ and thereby, in the interests of sensationalism, have robbed of its very real claims to serious consideration.

‘ ‘ Our experience with the Chinese labour in France has shown us that Chinamen can labour as efficiently as, if not more efficiently, than the best European workmen, and with a persistancc without rival. They arc content with a far smaller wage, accustomed to less food, and expect fewer comforts.

“The fact that, properly handled, they can easily be led and trained to new tasks makes them the*more formidable as competitors, provided that the directing brains can be found to organise their work. “In China, too, vast coalfields exist, sufficient to provide with ease coal to meet the needs of the whole world for a thousand years. I have seen it stated that in parts of China the cost of a ton of coal at the pit mouth is Is Cd. “The Chinese must eventually demand a place in the European labour market, competing with our highlypaid labour and our ’infinitely higher standards of living. How is that problem to be solved •?

1 ‘ Then, again, there is India, with a population of over 300,000,000 souls, dependent upon us for their future, and already beginning to turn towards social, industrial, and political development.

“How ;iro the natives of India to bG controlled when the educational system in that country has expanded and carried them a stage further on tho road, along which, even now, we are endeavouring to guide them ? “I hold that this tremendous problem is only capable of solution by giving to all races, however insignificant, what wo proudly regard as British freedom and justice, and thereby in the course of many years levelling them up to our own standards of life. “Only by raising all other civilisations to the level of ours can we make it possible for us and them to live side by side in peace. Only in this way can the international rivalry be brought and confined within the limits of peace. Only thus can the terrible pressure of economic competitions be prevented from driving whole continents into war.

“It is, I imagine, with something of this idea that an economic and industrial side has been woven into the fabric ,of the League of Nations. If so, I welcome it as a step in the right direction, but the League of Nations can never absolve us from the mission that is laid upon us as members of the British Empire to use for the betterment of mankind the unequalled opportunities that God has given us.”