The Daily News SATURDAY, AUGUST 3, 1935. A MEMORY AND A WARNING

Taranaki Daily News, 3 August 1935, Page 6

The Daily News

SATURDAY, AUGUST 3, 1935. A MEMORY AND A WARNING

OFFICES: NEW PLTMQU-FS, Corrl® Stwafc. STRATFORD. Bre»dw«y. HAWERA. Hteh Street

Twenty-one years ago to-mor-row, on August 4, 1914, the British Empire entered the four years’ conflict usually spoken of as the Great War. Since effluxion of time has permitted a truer perspective of all the circumstances that led to that terrible carnage certain facts stand out clearly. One of them is that Britain did not desire war, saw in it no benefit to the Empire, and had worked whole-heartedly for peace until the "eleventh hour.” Another conviction that is equally unassailable is that no country realised what the conflict was to mean to civilisation, or had any real conception of the unparalleled destruction of life and property entailed in niodern warfare. . The stories of brilliant as well as of faulty leadership, and of heroic efforts among the rank and file have been told in every country concerned in the struggle, and so far as the British Empire is concerned the arguments and discussions upon personalities and strategy hav6 not yet ceased. As the war progressed mankind found itself obliged to find some purpose for the struggle beyond that of selfpreservation. The purpose was found in the determination that when military dominance had been crushed there should be evolved some saner way than that of wholesale destruction for the settlement of international difficulties. Only by such a contribution to the evolution of civilisation could there be any

justification for the priceless lives sacrificed and irreparable destruction of property. For those who were old enough at the time to appreciate the anxieties and bewilderments of the war years the anniversary tomorrow will revive stern memories. In many New Zealand homes it will reawaken pride in the faithfulness of kindred who gave their lives for the Empire, although it will also revive the bitter realisation of the personal bereavement* the heroism of the soldier and the sailor demanded. But since 1914 a new generation has grown up, and is taking its share in the control of national affairs, to whom the Great War is but a recollection of a cloud which hovered over childhood, and in later years left the Dominion the dreary task of overcoming the results of badly mismanaged military enterprise. Older people know with what fervour the establishment of the League of Nations was hailed at the close of the war, Younger men and women know nothing of that morning glow of enterprise and hope in which the League was created. They have grown up in an atmosphere in which criticism 'of the League has flourished and its weaknesses have been paraded. Young New Zealand learns that democracy has been overthrown in many countries of Europe since the League was founded, and that Great Britain and France and the United States, among the larger Powers, are the only nations in which dictatorship is not the method of rule. Added to this is a general increase in armaments, each nation protesting its preparations are for defence alone, but each refusing to follow Great Britain’s lead by reducing them, until Britain also < has been forced to increase her fighting forces. In such circumstances is it any wonder that Youth is scornful of peace propaganda and ideals? The "strong right arm" represents a'policy at least definite and understandable, as opposed to one indefinite, if not pusillanimous, and apparently loading to international chicanery, rather than to the universal peace that was the ideal when the Great War ended. It is impossible to withhold sympathy from Youth’s impatience, but the aftermath of the last war is such as to prove day by day that the "strong arm” may settle one argument, but in doing so creates many more. The League with all its failings represents a sustained effort towards international understanding, and if it has the support of Youth in the countries which acknowledge its authority its prestige and its power for good will be enhanced beyond all recognition. To-day negotiations are proceeding at Geneva which may avert bloodshed, and which it would have been almost impossible to conduct had there been no such international organisation as the League. There is no longer any appeal in the "glamour" of war. It is a "dirty business” according to the testimony of those with closest experience of its actualities. To-morrow’s anniversary should stimulate reflection that war is as ineffective an arbiter as it is wasteful; that to use it will mean that civilisation has stepped backward instead of forward; and that the penalties involved will fall chiefly upon the young men and women of the nations. To realise these facts is not to substitute desire to save one’s skin for a wider patriotism. Rather is it to accept a plain warning against perils that may endanger not merely the Dominion, not only the Empire, but civilisation itself.