THE CAUSE OF PEACE

Taranaki Daily News, 12 November 1934, Page 7

THE CAUSE OF PEACE

ARMISTICE DAY LESSONS ARCHDEACON GAVIN’S SERMON. NEW PLYMOUTH COMMEMORATION. PARADE OF RETURNED SOLDIERS. Sixty-six returned soldiers and a fair proportion of the public yesterday paid fitting homage at New Plymouth to those_ who fell in the Great War. In the absence through illness of Lieut.-Colonel G. F. Bertrand, Captain F. L. Hartnell was in command of the parade. After the two minutes’ silence was observed he laid a wreath on the cenotaph. Mr. H. Johnson laid a second wreath on behalf of Mr. and Mrs. C. H. Burgess. The notes of the Last Post and the Reveille were sounded by Bugler Murdoch. As Armistice Day fell this year on a Sunday it was brought more prominently than usual before the public eye. The first ceremony of remembrance at New Plymouth was held on Marsland Hill by officials of the Y.W.-Y.M.C.A., and Mass was said later in the day for the repose of the souls of the soldiers. All churches held services at 10.45 p.m. so that the congregations were able to honour the two minutes’ silence. Preaching at St. Mary’s Church, Archdeacon G. H. Gavin said Armistice Day commemorated the conclusion of the Great War, but it chiefly honoured those men and women who gave their lives in the great struggle. At 5 a.m. on November 11, 1918, the Armistice was signed and at 11 a.m. all guns ceased firing. It had become the custom to observe two minutes’ silence from 11 a.m. on each anniversary of the armistice in respectful memory of those, who before the general order to cease fire was obeyed had laid down their lives in the Great War. ABOLITION OF WAR. “Armistice Day as it comes round year after year hammers at our conscience asking us to do all we can to abolish war, and it is not right that we should be deaf to its appeal,” the speaker continued. “During the Battle of Messines the regimental medical officer and several men including myself went over to a captured German pill-box, a little concrete building of two rooms, to convert it into a regimental aid post. The place was a shambles. Before we could use it the dead had to be carried out. As I stood outside a wounded German, seeing my clerical collar, caught me by the ankles and appealed for mercy or help. He could not speak English and I shall always regret to my dying day my inability to help that poor soul. Behind his appeal surely is humanity itself asking for the abolition of war.” In the last war New Zealanders killed numbered over 16,000 and the total British dead was 869,000. France lost 1,398,515 lives and Germany about 2,000,000. New Zealand incurred a debt of £80,000,000 odd, while the Great War cost Great Britain and her Dominions £7,606'000,000. This money would surely be better spent in promoting education, health, art, science and in the relief of distress and unemployment. Yet the next war with the improvements in aviation and the advance in chemical warfare would be more hideous than the last. To-day the world was an armed camp. It was conceivable that a situation might arise in which people might be called upon to defend their homes, their women and their children. The speaker could not see that to do so was necessarily unChristian. Nor could he bring himself to speak disparagingly of those who were serving In the defence forces. He hoped these young men might never see war. But having said that, he gave way to no one in his ardent desire for universal peace. Another great war would make the economic situation one of intolerable suffering. People had to make universal peace their ideal. PUBLIC OPINION NOT SUFFICIENT. In conclusion Archdeacon Gavin added a warning. The creation of a public opinion against war was not sufficient, he said. People must go further than that and work for a spirit of co-opera-tion and mutual friendliness as between nation and nation. Two organisations were endeavouring to promote this. The League of Nations was to-day the most hopeful channel for settlement .of international differences by arbitration instead of war. But the scope of the League of Nations activities was far wider than that, and if adequate opportunity it could help forward the brotherhood of nations in many useful ways, such as international co-operation against crime and disease. The unemployment problem was more than a national one, it was world wide and the League of Nations had useful machinery in its International Labour Office. The League had done good work already in the repatriation of refugees, and the repression of slavery and of the trade in pernicious drugs. The second organisation, the Junior Red Cross, had for one of its objects the promotion of friendship and understanding between the children of all nations. It was at work in the schools of the Dominion, and was worthy of very greatly increased support. Albums illustrative of school work, the Dominion and the locality where the school was situated were made up and sent overseas to. a school in Japan or Norway, and vice versa. In this way children got to know by personal touch the children of other nations. If people could create friendliness between the children there was hope for the future. The factors which made for war were many, but people could not ignore the truth that if they wanted peace they must remould human nature itself. The teaching and example of Christ was the best and most effective means to use in that object.