THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, JANUARY 2, 1926. LOOKING FORWARD.

Wairarapa Age, 2 January 1926, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, JANUARY 2, 1926. LOOKING FORWARD.

Wo enter on the new year more hopefully than at any time since the termination of the war. At first, the world had to suffer disillusion from the hope that the great struggle was “a war to end war.” The horizon everywhere seemed clouded,' peaco was threatened in several parts of the world, and the social upheaval was severely felt within the Empire by way of serious labour disturbances. Just before the old year dosed came the trigmpli of Locarno. At last a practicable guarantee of peace is in being, and the nations may now turn to the practical details of reduction of armaments, and spare mo,re time for economic rehabilitation. Locarno brought us at Christmas time a new hope of “Peace on earth, and goodwill towards men.” Difficulties remain, but they are being tackled in a new spirit of compromise and reconciliation. The battered old world was never surer of the lesson that force has failed miserably as the foundation upon which the peace of the world can be built. Force has failed internationally, and in domestic affairs. The experiences of the last war have stripped away from martial conflict the last vestiges of its glamour, and the communities of the world now know, as no former peoples did, how futile is the appeal to violence. Differences will arise, and strong conflicts of interest between nations, but an international regulating force is coming into being, and from it, slowly perhaps, but gaining in strength as it successfully operates in minor things, will evolve an international opinion, an internatrOal friendliness of peoples, which may eliminate the appeal to force. Certainly we enter on 1926 with more hope for this great ideal than could have been assumed at any time since the great war. Tired of destruction, the world is anxious to turn to construction, and .from these activities will come greater comfort for the masses of the community, great security not only as between nations, but within their own bounds.