WORLD'S PRESS CONGRESS

Waikato Times, Volume 94, Issue 14774, 13 October 1921, Page 5

WORLD'S PRESS CONGRESS

PRESIDENT HARDJNG'S MESSAGE. MAINTENANCE OF PEACE. ABMED CONFLICT UNTHINKABLE. , / (Australian and N.Z. Cable Assn.) Received October 13, 12.10 a.m. WASHINGTON, October 11. ■': President Harding lias despatched a letter in connection with the opening, of the Press Congress, at Hawaii, saying: "If your deliberations shall inspire a larger, belter and a more humane view of the elements entering into the problem of peace and measur-. able disarmament, and if you can encourage an ideal of a world permanently at peace, then you will have given a vast impetus to the efforts of the statesmen who. will presently consider these problems at Washington. The Pacific ought to be the seat of generous open-minded competition between the best ideals of the Eastern and Western life."

The President issues a warning against propaganda, and adds: "The democracy has come to its great trial, and the verdict will depend largely., upon your capacity to make men think."

He hopes the Washington Conference will result in the maintenance of a world peace. Concerning the Pacific, the letter said: "We have heard much in recent years of the problem of the Pacific, whatever that may be. I lake it to be merely a phase of universal problems of race, of men and nations wherever they are. It is hard to imagine justification in this day and age, especially in view of the world's late unhappy experience, for an armed conflict among civilised peoples anywhere, and especially among peoples so widely separated as those on opposite borders of the Pacific. They represent different races, political systems, and modes of thought, and there may Well be between them and their widely- i varying systems amicable competition to determine which communities possess the better and more effective , ideas for human advancement, but that warfareshould interfere is almost unthinkable."