OBSTACLES TO PEACE

Taranaki Daily News, 4 June 1934, Page 7

OBSTACLES TO PEACE

REMEDY IN EDUCATION.

PERSONAL PART IN LEAGUE.

. “When people say the League of Nations has failed, what they really should say is that the States that are members of the League have failed to carry out the principles to which they are pledged,” said Mr. W. T. G. Airey, lecturer in history at Auckland University College, in an address to members of the League of Nations Union on Thursday night. Critics thought of “that body at Geneva” as something outside and independent of themselves, Mr. Airey continued. Actually, the men at Geneva were only the embodiment of the wills, or of the indifference, of citizens throughout’ the world, who would have to share the responsibility of failure. The obstacles to peace, and it was difficult to find people who did not want it, were the narrow tradition of patriotism, the conception of other nations as single entities and ignorance of the condition of the modern world. The remedy was education in every field, involving the transformation of regular educational systems to stress the development of the community as the real stuff of human history. It was a matter of intelligence as well as emotion, with the heart and head working together. In the face of the international situation, there were the alternatives of renouncing the League and returning to pre-war anarchy; the adjustment of national policies to League principles; or the creation and execution of some other superior scheme or policy, in connection with which Communism seemed the only clearly conceived policy. It was the opinion of some statesmen, including Mr. Stanley Baldwin, that another war would destroy civilisation. Mr. Airey considered that while national armaments existed on their present scale, while people were starved of the opportunity. for real human development, even of a decent existence, there was nothing worth calling civilisation to destroy, J