The Waikato Times With which is Incorporated The Waikato Argus. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 1922. FLEA EUR WORLD PEACE

Waikato Times, Volume 96, Issue 15033, 2 September 1922, Page 4

The Waikato Times With which is Incorporated The Waikato Argus. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 1922. FLEA EUR WORLD PEACE

In any history of the Great War yet to be written great prominence must of necessity be given to the name of Mr Lloyd George, as Prime Minister of Great Britain during a crisis of unprecedented magnitude, in which the existence not. only of Britain, but of civilisation generally was seriously threatened. It is therefore the more instructive to learn from the lips of Mr Lloyd George himself the horror and abomination of war inspired in him by his close experience of it when occupying his exalted station. Speaking on July 29 to the National Free Church Council, Mr Lloyd George made an eloquent, appeal for world peace. He declared that it was the duty of the churches to make a strong fight against war. He spoke in high praise of the League of Nations and revealed the fact that it was ho who at Paris moved its inclusion in Hie Treaty of Versailles. “I speak as one who had something to do with the war, and had to make a close study of it. During the war the cry was, ‘Never again!’ But there is a growing assumption that the conflict is coming again, sooner or later. That,” declared Mr Lloyd George, “is the business of the churches. The nations are building up their armaments; the nations that have been submerged and buried are build-

ing up new armaments. You have national animosities, national fears, suspicions, dislikes, ambition fostered and exaggerated. You have more than that to keep your eye on. What is happening? They are constructing even more terrible machines than even the late war saw. What for? Not for peace. What are they for? They are not even to disperse armies: they are to attack cities unarmed, where you : have defenceless populations; to kill, to maim, to poison, to mutilate, to burn, helpless women and children. If the churches of Christ'throughout Europe and America allow that to fructify, they had better close their doors.”. The next war, if it ever came, Mr Lloyd George went on to say, would be a war on civilisation itself. Britain had re- ' duced its armaments beyond what they • were before the war, and if all the nations did the same there would be no peril to peace. But it is difficult for one nation to remain defenceless when others construct machinery which may be used for its destruction. “Everything," he declared, “depends on the temper and spirit which is created thr&ughout the world, and it would be a sad thing, a sad danger, if the people of the world came to the conclusion that Christianity, despite, all its principles, despite all its ideals, was perfectly impotent to prevent mischief of that kind." Mr Lloyd George then declared that he was one of those who attached high hopes to the League of Nations, the covenant of which, he reminded his hearers, was in the first part of the Treaty of Versailles. “The League of Nations is an essential part of the machinery of civilisation. If it succeeds, civilisation is safe, and if it fails, and I speak advisedly, civilisation is doomed.” Mr Lloyd George insisted on the foliy-of believing that the League alone would save the world. It was the spirit behind the League that could alone give it the proper motive power in foreign relations. “It is difficult, very difhcult,” he said, “to speak with strength and often with suppression which you certainly would not exercise in matters affecting the political issues of your own country. Public opinion there is not amenable to public opinion here. The result is that a conflict comes very suddenly. How many men were there in August eight years ago who thought that the most terrible war in the world was just about to start? How many men 'who were supposed to be in the know thought so? Just read the books that have been written, even in Germany, on that subject. Men supposedly responsible thought a day or two before war was declared that the whole' trouble was over. It comes with a suddenness which is appalling. Well, it is too late then to work the elaborate machine. The war germ is just like any other germ. You really do not know that it has got you until you are stricken. It is no use reasoning with people once frenzy has seized them. You might as well argue with an epileptic in his fit. There is fear, ■and, most dangerous of all, there is distrust. There is one nation that will not believe anything that is said by another nation. There is that atmosphere in the world, and it is all explosive material, littered all over Europe. When a match has been dropped into explosives, it is no good brandishing the covenant of the League of Nations in the face of the explosion.” Mr Lloyd George then pointed out that already a new generation was arising, which knew not the hideousness and remorselessness of war. “These are always forgotten,” he said. “I had to read up the other day the history of the post-war-period from 1815 to 1821, when there were millions starving. Waterloo —you see pictures of it, gorgeous pictures, thrilling pictures, pictures that make you feel as if you could grasp a sword and dasli along with those horsemen: What followed Waterloo? I£obody knows, and they forget the disorganisation of trade and industry. The difficulty of getting your daily bread; hundreds and thousands tramping the streets to find some opportunity of earning a living for themselves and for their children, and tramping in the vain despair that filled the land; high taxation, high prices, all that will have gone, but the glory of war will always bo blazoned forth. A new generation will 1 be judging the issue when the time comes and they will forget what happened in Europe and Russia, with no way out of the pit and sinking deeper into it with every convulsive effort; a Germany clinging desperately to the rotten branch of debased currency, and when that gives way, God help "Germany. All that is forgotten. It is the business of the church to keep that before the eye of the people. What was one of the great lessons of the war? I will tell you. Once there was a nation with the most perfect .army in the world. It was beaten hccause it had a bad cause. There were nations with illequipped armies. They won. Why? They had righteousness on their side. I remember Marshal Foch telling me that the German army that marched into France was the most perfect military machine that had ever been pul together. Scattered and destroyed, it is now only just a bare police force, barely adequate to keep order in its own land, without being a menace to any other country. Why? The consciousness of the world destroyed it because it fought for an unrighteous cause. That is one of the lessons of the war. Trust not in force.” The Prime Minister added a personal note which will find an echo of sympathy far beyond the circle of his audience in London. “I have had,” he said, “some experience of war. It was not my will. T was just like millions of others caughl by the cogwheels of war, and drawn into its terrible machinery. How I got there, why 1 got there, is not for me to say. I simply did my duty, but whaj..l saw of it for years filled me with horror. There is no more horrible alternative than that between devising the machinery of slaughter and abandoning, on Hie other hand, the cause of rigid, liberty and humanity. But what i saw of it, day by day, maims me vow that I will consecrate what is left of my energies to make it impossible that humanity in future shall have io pass through the fire, .torment, sacrilege, horror and Mr Lloyd George serve as an indication

squalor of war." These remarks by of the motives inspiring him in his efforts to bring about peaceful conditions in Europe; and also explain in part ids decision to devote the whole of the profits from the book he Is writing to charitable purposes. The story he lias to tell is, he feels, one of such anguish that no one should make private profit by compiling a more or less official record of national trials and sorrows during the war.