PREPARE FOR THE WORST TO GET THE BEST

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 2, 4 January 1939, Page 7

PREPARE FOR THE WORST TO GET THE BEST

DEFENCE OF CIVILISATION VIEW OF THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY I British Official Wireless ] RUGBY, Jan. 2. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Cosmo Lang, in a New Year broadcast, said that in the confused situation in which it sometimes seemed the whole world was gcing mad, thankfulness for deliverance in the past gives way to fear of new dangers which may be coming in the future. The way of sanity and strength was to prepare for the worst and hope for the best. To prepare for the worst was indeed their bounden duty. In a world full of threats and dangers we dare to neglect the defence of the lives, homes and liberties of our people and of all that men care to live for. But all the while we must hope for the best. To speak and think as if it were sure to come may even help to make it come. We must go forward as one people in a spirit of national unity. Parties there will be and must be, but uniting them all is the value we all set on tradition, liberties, and the way of common life embodied in our democracy. We must go forward in the pursuit of peace. Judgment on Itself. “In the present condition of this disordered world we are beholding a judgment day. It is our once vaunted civilisation that is being judged. Think of the millions in China driven homeless and helpless before the ruthless armies of a civilised Power. Think of the thousands turned adrift into the world by relentless persecution perpetrated by a highly-civilised State. In spite of all the hopes of progress are these not signs of a return to the Dark Ages?” “Surely it is being made plain that

civilisation cannot save itself. Its salvation, its redemption from the downward tendencies always at work within it must not come from itself but from another world—the eternal, spiritual world.”