WAR DANGERS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 19033, 10 June 1924, Page 9

WAR DANGERS

FEARS OF THE FUTURE. SPEECH BY DR. RITSON. Rev. Dr. Ritson, M.A., secretary of the British and Foreign Bible Society, speaking to the members of the Millions Club at Sydney, gave details of his recent tours throughout Europe, and stated that whilst the war secured for the European people their liberty it most certainly did not bring peace, and from what he had seen he was not a believer in war to end war. A lot of nonsense, he said, had been talked about self-determination. They did not give self-determination to their young children, and if they did he would not like to live in their homes. They did not give self-determination to criminals and lunatics. Yet the people of the European countries who were loudest in the demands for selfdetermination were either criminals or lunatics or children in the matter of Government. The position in Europe at the present time was that millions there never got a square meal and never knew when they would get one. The real money had been taken from the people in most of the European countries, and they were given paper instead, that was worth scarcely 25 per cent, of the real money, with the result that the whole continent was impoverished, and there was the direst distress. Yet Europe was the centre of the world’s present civilisation, and so long as Europe was sick the whole world, including Australia and New Zealand suffered.

One of the dangers of the future, as he saw it, was a spirit of nationalism was arising in most countries, rather than internationalism. All over the world nations were wanting to be “on their own,” and there was a grave •danger in that so long as the different nations were on a different level of morality. At the present time big financial and other concerns had to place the strongest and most ingenious doors on their strongrooms. Those were the protection between the thieves and honest men. There must be that protection so long as they had people on different levels of morals. It was the same with nations. Armies and nations were the protection of the nations on the higher moral level against the depredations of those on the lower moral level. If they wanted to get rid of war the only way to do so was by having all the nations on the same moral level.

The race question was also a difficult one. There was undoubtedly a coming crisis betwen the white, yellow, and black races. The black races in Africa *and America were forming a most acute problem in those countries. At the present time New York was the greatest black city in the world. The black people were watching and wondering at the internecine strife between the white races. The black races were increasing at a rate that means that the black population was doubling itself in every fifty years. It was hard to over-estimate the risk for the future there was in that face.

Regarding the yellow races, it. was providing the most serious of problems for the future. If he lived in Australia or New Zealand he would feel very uncomfortable unless the fullest possible consideration was given to all the aspects of the problem. There were 300,000,000 coloured people in India and its dependencies, and they were clamouring for self-determination, but were, as a people, unable to govern themselves. There were 400,000,000 people in China now practically leaderless and a menace to the peace of the Pacific. Fortunately, the Chinese were a peace-loving race, but there was a grave danger, if a change did not come over the face of things in the future, that the white races in the times of their children or children’s children would be plunged in a cataclysm beside which the recent world struggle would be regarded as comparatively insignificant.