EDUCATING FOR PEACE

Taranaki Daily News, 29 December 1934, Page 12 (Supplement)

EDUCATING FOR PEACE

CAMPAIGN AGAINST WAR ATTITUDE OF THE PUBLIC. OPENING OF NEW HIGHWAY.

(By

Maire M. Arthur.)

Public opinion in general is against war; we can therefore safely say that we have reached an era in which the great majority desires peace. They desire peace but are doing little or nothing to see that their great desire becomes a permanent fact.

The different motives for which men desire peace are not all purely altruistic. Nations make of peace an opportunity for commercial gain, to capture trade, to Increase wealth, acting against each other’s interests in every way. Peace should be felt to be and made to be an opportunity for great social action, not a period of resting on our oars hoping that another war will not take place, but a period of strenuous activity. . The basic idea must be a striving for the common good and not for. individual gain—beginning in the daily lives of the people themselves and extending to all around them, widening out from a consolidated national peace, devoid of internal friction, to a great international peace. This may seem a very idealistic, conception—the conception of a great international peace—but such is not the case. The British Empire has already set a standard in this respect by showing the world that it is. possible for 75 different units in five different continents, consisting of every race, to live together amicably. . CONDUCT IN WAR. ..During the war men forgot their personal quarrels, and differences and joined together in a fine idealism, none the less fine.although mistaken. Why cannot this idealism be made to serve in the cause of peace? It- is because few men and women have any real conception of the uses Of peace.. We make war with increasing skill' but we find it difficult to conceive alasting peace because we have no dominant enthusiasm about it. To hate war, to recognise the futility of it, the waste of human life and energy, will not save us from it. Even refusing to serve will not fundamentally change the situation. We must establish another form if loyalty; a loyalty based on unselfish service ’in the ■ cause of humanity, unless we want our civilisation to suffer a relapse. Serving our country in peace milst be made to be as heroic as serving in war.

• ( One of the difficulties lies in the wholesale admiration of a soldier’s virtue. A man serving in war is worthy of every honour because he is prepared to give his life for his country. A civilian serving his country in the aims of peace, ready to give his life, for their furtherance, would be, just as worthy. The soldier works not for personal gain but for the community. When he has ended his term of service and again enters civilian life it-is taken for granted that he has 16ft his idealism behind and works for personal gain only. Yet that 1 man is the same man with the same stores of idealism, probably heightened by experience.. In war-time his idealism helped him to do his work as a faithful soldier; why do we assume that it has nothing to do with his work as a civilian? “THE ONLY CIVILISED ONES.” Another difficulty in the way is the fact that the majority of people in every country imagines that they are the civilised ones and the other nationalities are all barbarians. Conceptions such as these are worthy of only primitive imaginations—imaginations still in the nursery of civilisation. People must be made to realise that to-day they can do nothing socially, economically, or politically without . affecting their neighbours. .It is never difficult to find youthful recruits in war time; they are there, full of youthful id'ealism and. enthusiasm, clamouring for action. It is our duty to educate these ideals to a conception of peace,- so that later generations will accept peace as a normal condition and not look upon it as a-period of rest between two wars. Effort is always desired. as a sign of noble purpose; peace must be made to be not only hard but serviceable. .The youth of the world desires not ease and length of days but difficulties and perils to be faced. Surely there are difficulties and perils enopgn on the hard .and laborious way to a lasting peace. * SOMETHING TO WORK FOR. Let us teach them that they are not sacrificing themselves for others, that they are not to assume a self-denying posture, but that each works for the life that is within ,as well as for the lives of others, a life of creative reform, a life of enjoyment, Let them march on with the banners of construction, not destruction, an army bent on bringing the human life of the world more into line with the natural beauty of the world. It will not be easy to conquer war but it will be impossible if we do not Strive as earnestly for its elimination as we strove for its establishment. We shall be faced with so many arguments. We shall be told, “There always has been war and there always will be war.” We are not asking to change human nature but only human behaviour. Cannibalism was once widespread; today it is a thing of the past. Religious wars have shaken the foundations of kingdoms; to-day they no longer take place. We shall be told that man is a fighting animal; if that were not so we should need no laws. There would be no work for judges, magistrates and lawyers; we should always see each other’s point of view; our conduct would need no rules to guide it. Another argument that we have to face is that no peace is possible until Capitalism is abolished. The Russian Goyernment does not share that view, the view of so many Socialists and C&mmunists. Changes in the economic system are no doubt necessary, but that is apart from the political Relationships of States, which are necessary if war is to be abolished. THE UNDERLYING CAUSE. The underlying cause of war'is political anarchy, the attempt of nations to live not as a community but in the midst of individual nationalism, each trying to be stronger than the other, and each trying to be its own judge. People will also say to us, “We must defend ourselves.” Under the League of Nations’ system of collective defence we can say to all nations alike: “We can offer you exactly the same rights of protection we claim. No nation shall be judge in its own cause. All shall agree to arbitration which is alike for both parties.”

A permanent peace must begin in the hearts of men, in the changed attitude of the general public, based on their normal lives and habits. The problem i« one of imagination and education. The primitive idea that war is for the good of man must be exposed and the higher level of the motive force of peace be taught. After all, peace depends upon the opinion of what other nations think of each other, and nations as well -as individuals judge by deeds not words, Let us hand on to youth a great conception—the opening of a road, not yet travelled, hardly begun to be built—the highway of international reconciliation.