WHY SHRIEK AT WAR?

Southland Times, Issue 17764, 24 September 1914, Page 5

WHY SHRIEK AT WAR?

THEKh ARK WORSE HORRORS. A BISHOP'S PROTEST. At the Anglican Synod Hr Long, Bishop of Bathurst, made reference to the war. "I believe.” he said, “there are many tilings worse than war, and that in certain circumstances pence itself might be worse than war. 1 think that slavery and cowardice arc worse than war. Let us by all means hate war, but let us hale dishonour and unrighteousness even worse than war. “I ■wjls told of one member of this synod who says that it is all nonsense to fight at all—that, wo might just as well be ruled by the Kaiser as by the King, and that this would bo mucli better than making a lot of German widows. I believe that t am a very peaceful person myself., but I have a hatred of mere sentimentality, and a love for clear thinking Some of the kind of persons referred to hold up their hands in horror about war. Well, so do wc all. We hate and abhor the cruel insanity of It all. At the same time, there are many who are. serfs of an enfeebled imagination who shudder at war because it brings suffering before them in a way they cannot realise. What is Hie use of saying to those people even on the lines of commonsense, that there is at least as great a wastage of life going on continuously in days of peace in the overcrowded and sweated towns of the old world? If you were to tell them that the average life of female factory workers in Belfast lias dropped to 3R years, that infant mortality in Bolton had gone up 10 per cent., that the death rate of Stepney has risen C 1 per cent., that 17* per cent, of the population of South London is living below the poverty line, their answers would probably be; 'ls that really sor But it would not shake or appall their imagination because their imagination is too enfeebled to real’se what the suffering means. These things we put up with from day to day, and still manage to enjoy the cream on cur morning porridge; but when war comes, we are prepared to shriek at once, almost to faint at the sight of blood, as if life itself was the one and only good, and death the one and only horror the world had for us.

“For myself if 1 webc a sweated, tweed-capped, undersized factory hand in Manchester. 1 would be glad of one hour of glorious life on the fields of France, even if It meant that I had to die of a German bullet a few years before I died of consumption in some garret of the slums.”