THE BATTLE OF PEACE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 89, Issue 300, 20 December 1945, Page 4

THE BATTLE OF PEACE

JT has been said, and with more than a grain of truth, that men can fight battles successfully in war, but they fail dismally when it comes to a battle to win peace. Just how true that is we ourselves can gauge, because of the lack of understanding we each have of the other’s job. So far as New Zealand is concerned there is a necessity for many hands to labour before full reward comes to the people as a whole. Take butter and cheese—the farmer must farm and produce, but that which he produces must be treated in the factory, packed, loaded into a ship, sailed across the sea, taken out of the ship, put on the market, sold across the counter, carried home and then finally consumed. Each pair of hands must be rewarded in some measure from the one pound of butter, the meat, the wool, or any other product exported. Yet how widely apart are the people who labour to produce, to carry and to consume. The farmer and the slaughterman have a tremendous amount in common, but there are forces which keep holding them apart, fanning elass war. Seaman and farmer both depend on the same economic fabric, but they are as the poles apart when it comes to understanding one another’s job. A seaman sees little beyond the gangway of ship, and the farmer little beyond his boundary fence. Yet both should strive to see the other’s points of view. Before we can win any battle of peace as between nations we must get to know one another, and must banish from society the troublemaker, who proclaims half truths to the world and, sets industry against industry, man against man. If one half of the world is to go through life with a burning, bitter hatred of the other half, what chance is there of a survival of peace? If labour cannot be found for mills, to hew coal, to do many of the more distasteful tasks of the world, what chance has man of maintaining his civilisation? In the battle of peace the call of duty is just as potent as in war, only people will not have it so. Men who labour find it hard to realise that in industry they must be as alert to duty as any sentry who was posted in battle to watch over his sleeping mates. How true that is in the battle of peace, true, yet not understood and so rarely practised.