MAY CAUSE TROUBLE

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20483, 8 December 1934, Page 25 (Supplement)

MAY CAUSE TROUBLE

Manufacture of Guns and Munitions. COMMONSENSE VIEWS. (By E. J. HOWARD, M.F.) the gentleman with the rimu box comes to collect all that remains of the once-Member for Christchurch South, the sand having been thrown in and the flowers neatly placed, someone will have the pleasure ot looking around the household gods of this extinguished if not distinguished citizen. When they look at the collection of books, pamphlets and papers and try

to get a glimpse into the system of reading the late Member adopted, it will puzzle some and upset a few. But there, there, who can read the mind of any living man, let alone a dead one? Do we know our neighbour ? We see

him dressed and shiny, with well-pol-ished boots and stiff, starched shirt, going out the gate with a small black book on a Sunday morning, and we take it for granted that he is going to church; but is he? Amongst my treasured possessions there are books on almost every subject under the sun, and even some about the sun itself. But I am almost afraid to confess that it is not Buckle’s introduction to the “ History of Civilisation ” or Haeckel’s “ Riddle of the Universe ” that is most thumbed and worn at the edges, but it is one of Van Loon’s “ Story of Mankind ” and Bickerton’s “ Romance of the Earth ” that are consulted again and again. A Key to the Door. The easy and commonsense way these people tell their story appeals to one such as me, but my highbrow friend who speaks on current events over the radio says it is evidence of a depraved taste.

Howard Moore’s “Savage Survivals” tells me in plain, unadulterated language why I have got pointed ears and why the hair on my arms grows one way to the elbow and the opposite way from the elbow to the wrist; why the appendix has ceased to function in my body since my ancestors dropped from the trees and decided to walk upright. Professor Bickerton again tells me that we should not be surprised if coal is found at the Antarctic, and warns me that the movements of this old cannonball we call the earth must have left buried vegetation under where the ice is now. Wynwood Reade also warns me that man has been martyred in his struggle for existence ever since he developed a brain and became a little superior to the animals. But Van Loon, with his funny little pictures! Just a stroke here and there, and we see Galileo leaning up against the church wall, with superstition drawing him to believe and science urging him to investigate; and we can see this old conflict, as it were, working in his very human mind.

The reading of these books seems to offer a key that will open the door to “ commonsense ”; and after all we cannot all be specialists, and if we can only bring to bear on ordinary things of life a commonsense view of them, the mystery disappears, and with it half the bogiemen we term fears. Which brings me to the Pacific. Clouds in the Pacific. Those who have been “ down to the Sea IP ships ” and have suffered from the “ doldrums,’’ when the sails have hung like rags from the yards and the pitch in the deck seams begins to bubble, know that at some moment a little dark cloud will appear on the horizon and know a change is coming. That change may mean half a gale that will belly out the sails and send the good ship careering over on to the starboard tack, or it may mean a blow that will force the careful sailorman to shorten sail and give the ship a chance. Lately there have been a number of little dark clouds appearing in the Pacific that no barometer will gauge for us as to whether it means a cyclone or just a handful of wind to keep us busy. And here one must x\arn 1 Fiends to beware of propaganda. Commonsense tells us that so long as men can grow rich by the manufacture of guns, so long will guns be manufactured. Guns having been produced, ammunition having been supplied, someone /will pull the trigger and the row is on. Japan’s Policy. Now, our neighbour, Japan, studied the ways of all nations that have prospered. Germany for militarism and America for gefc-rich-quick methods, Britain for her navy; but also she studied why the sun never set on the British Empire; and so she altered her flag to a Rising Sun and her religion to one of conquest. Her young men studied psychology and her girls weaving. She wanted earth, and she wanted a large junk of it. Her own countrv consisted of a lot of half-submerged mountain tops. She had little or no natural advantages except the ozone that fills the veins of her children with bubbling blood and energy. She looked with longing eyes to wherever there were large strips of land unoccupied or thinly occupied. At one time she turned greedy eyes towards Australia. She sent men forth to spy otit this land, but found that it would cost too much to occupy that countrv. Climate and natural water supply did not suit the blood of the Japs. ' But away in the north was just the piece of country that offered all she wanted. Food, iron, gold, timber and coal. Trees and plants for raw material and grain country for the taking; and so she turned to Manchuria and told all the *-dlier nations that it was a private row and that they could keep out. She is cheeky and. in fact, one suspects her at times of looking for trouble ; and she may be. But here is where commonsense tells us to watch the ammuntion maker, or there may be a row. Who knows?