Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Over 50 Years.] MONDAY, 15th APRIL, 1935. WAR AND NATIONAL POLICY.

Wairarapa Daily Times, 15 April 1935, Page 4

Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Over 50 Years.] MONDAY, 15th APRIL, 1935. WAR AND NATIONAL POLICY.

We cannot discuss any problem to-day without taking into consideration the fact that we live in a machine age, and that as soon as any people come within the scope of our modern industrial civilisation its need for economic resources begins to expand with incredible rapidity, for not only are there created ever new wants, but the rate of the population grows by leaps and bounds, due, amongst other things, to modem sanitation and hygiene. Before the 19th century the growth of population was slow, indeed it was practically stationary in most countries, so there was little urge to acquire new lands as compared with that which has since arisen. The first countries to annex territory to their hearts’ content were England, Holland, France, Spain and Portugal, and they were founding mighty empires before Italy, Japand and Germany were in a position to take any interest in the matter at all. It is clear that a country completely cornered, such as Japan is to-day, would then have sought a remedy in war. We must remember this when we criticise Japan’s resentment at the UlS.A.’s immigration policy, the growing economic nationality of the dominant powers, the unequal distribution of the world’s natural resources, and, above all, at the self-satisfied way in which the Western nations, having won half the world by means of war, suddenly discover that war is not a legitimate means of national policy, but without showing the slightest inclination to disgorge the spoils that they won by this means in the past. What are we going to do about it, for war is certainly to-day not a legitimate instrument of national policy? Are we going to face the question or adopt the old expedient of “wait and see?’’