CORRESPONDENCE

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19374, 24 December 1932, Page 5

CORRESPONDENCE

INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION. To the Editor of " The Tlmaru Herald.” Sir,—Your interesting article on the above subject in to-day’s issue certainly directs attention to the vital factor in the prevention of war. Germany herself provided a striking example of the power of education to send a whole nation along the road her rulers wanted her to follow. In her case the ideal chosen had deplorable results for the whole world. It was the ideal of war. The modern generation—or the thinking part of it—has decided to annihilate the war idea. No other generation has so unitedly and strongly attempted to do so before. “It is not necessary to enlarge on this point. There were few soldiers in the Great War who did not early discover that its horror did not lie in the risk to their own lives, but in the misery it inflicted on a fair part of the human race; the notion of the de- ■ truction of millions of bodies and brains that should have enriched man'•’nd; the knowledge of the frightful unseen misery inflicted by every battle id. only on comrades or enemy soldiers. who were ready enough to die, but upon innocent, tender sufferers—wives, parents, children. Every time you smashed a man you not merely put ut the light of omeone who probably ':ore you no personal ill-will; you brought ghastly suffering upon women, hildren and cld folks living in homes -presumably as full of love and anxius hope as your own.” I hardly agree with the application si the term “palsied” to the League. Great movements usually have a longer life than human beings. That being the case, and the League having just pas-ed its twelfth birthday, it is surely rather premature to taunt it with bid age! It may certainly have a much mere hardy constitution than our friend, the Shakesperian fool would like to believe. Admittedly its vigour at the present moment may be impaired. But there are few human institutions which are not affected by the present transitional conditions in world affairs. Regarding the Germans, I cannot share your correspondent’s views. “Cannot we very easily visualise Germany chuckling? ”he asks. Personally 1 cannot. Collectively she is too near calamity as a nation to chuckle internationally. Certainly she has resented some sections of the Treaty of Versailles. The people who are now being punished by that Treaty are not those responsible for the War. The Wai Lords and the war generation are shuffling off the scene and the postwar generation naturally asks why Germai'- -hould watch nations like France and Italy building up huge armies, navies and air forces, while their own nation must remain practically unarmed. Surely it would be rather unnatural if she did not make some attempts to be placed on an equal footing with her neighbours. Her forbearance for the last fourteen years is somewhat greater than your correspondent’s, I think. Let me bring to notice the followng statement of the official Australian historian of the Great War; “Ninetynine swimmers out of a hundred would jump overboard to save a brother from drowning. But suppose a man could attempt this only with the certainty of upsetting by his leap, men, women and children below him in a crowded boat, what would be his duty then?”—l am, etc,, AZOTE.