MR. MCGREGOR'S DEDUCTIONS.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXVI, Issue 17361, 20 August 1918, Page 3

MR. MCGREGOR'S DEDUCTIONS.

{To the Editor.)

Sir, —Your correspondent, Mr. James .McGregor, in commenting upon Mr. Hall Caine's condemnation of the Methodist view that the war is the chastisement of God for the national sins of the British, also Mr. Blamires' defence of intercessory prayer, says "that the sincerity, high value of the above gentlemen should impel considerations of deference and esteem in the following rema.rks.' As the deductions and remarks are Mr. McGregor's own, it is really hard to see why any of his remarks should be accorded any special consideration or esteem apart from their logical or accord-with-fact value. Mr. McGregor would have a tough and impossible task to prove his assertion that the revolutionary excesses in Russia today were the results of the doctrines of Karl .Marx or Leo Tolstoi, particularly in regard to the latter. Nowhere in Tolstoi's writings does

he advocate violence as a means to

reform, but on the other hand he has strongly condemned such either in the Governments or revolutionary bodies., vide his last appeal to Russian revolutionaries and reformers in one of his last books, en. titled "The Russian Revolution." jln Tolstoi's works, he contends that ! the principles expressed in the sermon on the Mount apply to legislative bodies as well as io inaividuals, and that the ignoring of these principles is one of the reasons why

bloody Avars are brought about. McGregor pins his faith on necessity. So do tha Germans in their defence of militarism and their ruthless murder of non-combatants. As one of their generals early in the war expressed it, "Necessity knows no law." In many of the German leaders' eyes, Mr. McGregor's "God of Nature" is that necessity that operates in Avhat Mr. McGregor terms ''Nature's simple and inexorable law of Selection." —Yours, etc..

ARTHUR TALBOT