IS WAR INEVITABLE?

Taranaki Daily News, 28 April 1923, Page 6

IS WAR INEVITABLE?

HOPE IN THE LEAGUE. AN APPEAL FOR SUPPORT. An appeal for individual and national interest in the League of Nations was made by Dr. W. P. P. Gordon (president of the Stratford Returned Soldiers’ As- ! «ociation) in an address at the Anzau memorial service at Stratford on Wednesday. The league was brought nearer home bv the doctor’s appeal for support for the New Zealand branch. He believed it was the only hope of preventing war and that support to it was the most appropriate memorial of Anzac. , .. ~ . It was fitting, Dr. Gordon said, that they should remember the glorious deeds of the men who fought on the Gallipoli Peninsula and in France, those who were dead, those who were bereaved and those, who, in years to come, must suffer from the war. Some were still bearing the heat of the day with lessened vigor as a result of their service. But Anzac Day had a fuller and deeper meaning. He was inclined to think tha: all we had fought for had been lost, and that the world' was drifting back to the state it was in before the war. “Is war inevitable?” the speaker asked. To prevent war must we prepare for war? Some still believed this to be so but he wished to differ from this idea. The experience of the last war proved the belief to be a fallacy. Before 1914 Europe was armed to the teeth and tins did not prevent war. If we prepared for war we would get it, and people should be taught that if we were preparing for war we were preparing for the same desolation that we suffered. Was there no alternative? If not he believed the war was in vain. He wished to bring before the gathering the hope of the League of Nations. At is was today the league was a poor example or what it might be, but it had accomplished a great deal of good. Its aim was to bring nations together by peaca rather than by war and it was against the doctrine of the survival of the fittest. . . iv 4. Dr. Gordon pleaded for an intelligent interest in the New Zealand branch of the League of Nations. He believed 1. was their only hope, and until Stratfor., and every other town took a firm interest in it, it would not prosper.