WORLD BROADCAST BY THE KING

Wanganui Chronicle, 27 December 1950, Page 5

WORLD BROADCAST BY THE KING

Love Must Take Place Of Hate

LONDON, Dec. 25.—His Majesty the King, in a world-wide broadcast today, said that mankind must make the most momentous choice in its history and decide between creeds of love and hatred. He added: “For if our world is to survive in any sense that makes survival worthwhile, it must learn to love, not to hate, to create, not to destroy. His Majesty was delivering his 13th Christmas message in a broadcast from his study at Sandringham, his Norfolk estate. There, as usual, he is spending Christmas, surrounded by members of his family. In his speech he referred to the “grim shadow of war” hanging over the world, making it hard to feel the happiness and merriment natural at Christmas. GRIM SHADOW OF WAR. His Majesty said: “Since I spoke to you last Christmas, storms have begun to cloud the horizon, in spite of all our hopes and endeavours. To many of you sitting listening to me in your homes, this fact must be uppermost in your minds. It is hard to feel the hanniness and merriment whjch naturally belongs to Christmas when the grim shadow nf war hangs over the world, for within the last few months our countrymen have once again been called upon to lay down their lives on the field of battle. Once more the sorrow of mourning has come to not a few British homes. In many more there is deep anxiety for husbands, sons and brothers who are facing death and enduring hardship and sickness far away beyond the sea. To thos* homes on this Christtmas Dav the thoughts of the Queen and mvseif turn first. We pray that. Christmas may bring them comfort in their present trial and courage to face whatever the future may hold in store. “It is 13 years now since T first sooke to you at this season. During that time we have been through many vicissitudes together. There have been vast alternative, good fortune and bad. Together, we have travelled a hard road, with many ups and lt would be foolish to pretend it has yet become smooth and easy. VIVID PICTURE OF LIFE. “I am often reminded of a bookone of the most famous in the English tongue—which was much loved and widely read by our forefathers and not unknown to many of you today. It seems to me that this book—‘Pilgrim’s Progress’—still offers a vivid picture of our life in this troubled world. Like the pilgrim we have gone forward, only to fall hack, like him we have fallen back only to press onward once more. We have passed through the valley of the shadow of death, but always with the determination natural to our race and training, we have kept our eyes fixed on the far-off delectable mountains of peace

and goodwill. And like the pilgrim, everyone of us has had our own individual burden to shoulder. Too often we have laid it down for a brief respite, only to be obliged to pick it up once more and find it heavier than before. “In a world of widespread and stupendous happenings, it is not surprising that an individual pilgrim—like Christian in that great book —should feel conscious of his own insignificance, bewildered by continual blows of fate, and finally tem.pted to take Faint-Heart as a friend and guide, but that must never be his motto. It must rather be ‘Whatever comes or does not come, I will not be afraid,’ for it is on each individual effort that the safety and happiness of the whole depends. TO CREATE, NOT TO DESTROY. ‘‘lt is the spirit in which each one of us fulfils his or her appointed task that counts, and that spirit is vouchsafed us in the message of this and every Christmas Day. For, if our world is to survive in. pT "' sense that makes survival worthwhile, it must learn to love, not to hate; to create, not to destroy. We stand at the beginning of a new half-century. In it man will have to decide between these two creeds—perhaps the most momentous choice he has had to make in his whole history. It will be made not as a resulwt of any abstract political theory, but through the way of life and the way of thought that each one of us practises at home. “What each one of us will have to determine is whether to consolidate what past generations have achieved for us. oi' acquiesce In its being brought to nought; to preserve the spiritual inheritance common to our mother country and her kindred nations. or witness its extinction. Thawinheritance has not nroduced any rigid system. It is something far more human that that—it is the collective ex pression of the lives of countless thousands of men and women, many of them quite unknown to fame, who have laboured incessantly for th? r| od of their fellows. SOLID FOUNDATION. “Like the great coral reefs in the Pacific, its growth has gone on silently and invisibly from century to century, strong enough to resist surge and thunder of the tides of fortune and of time. As with such a reef, if some extruding peak should crumble away, there remains always a solid foundation on which to build anew. .This foundation derives its permanence and its power to endure from faith in and at Christmas esneci[allv our faith in all is renewed and ! strengthened. That is why the meaning of Christmas and its outward exipression in all age-old celebrations associated with Christmas never lose their force. In good timp? or b’d. under clear skies or under the shadow of sorrow, it is always right to seek happiness nt Christmas. You may be sure the Queen and I and all our family with us here today hope wholeheartedly you will not fail to find it.”—Reuter.