THE GOOD IN WAR.

Waikato Times, Volume 110, Issue 18408, 15 August 1931, Page 18 (Supplement)

THE GOOD IN WAR.

NATURE’S PRUNING KNIFE SIR ARTHUR KEITH’S CONTENTION REPLY BY ENGLISH POET. Sir Arthur Keith Is a distinguished scientist, and usually a wise man, states Headway, the official publication 'of the League of Nations Union. But wise men sometimes say foolish things, and when Sir Arthur observed in a recent Rectorial address at Aberdeen University that war was Nature’s prunlng-hook, a hundred commentators from every quarter of the compass hastened to point out that the observation fell catastrophically below the standard of sound sense expected from a lecturer of Sir Arthur Keith’s distinction, if only because war sweeps away strong and weak alike—mostly, Indeed, the strong and young. Unless It be assumed that the pruning hook is wielded by an undiscriminating madman the analogy breaks down fantastically . There are, indeed, harder things to be said about Sir Arthur Keith than that, and though Headway does not feel called upon to say them, preferring to consider .the remark In question simply as a wise man’s lapse, it cannot refuse hospitality to the lines that distinguished poet and playwright, Mr John Drinkwater, sends it. For sufficient reasons verse is not customarily printed In these columns, but for equally sufficient reasons the rule may well be broken for once. To th® Lord Rector. Sir Arthur Keith ot Scotland, there is Judgment set between Your Science and the Souls of certain boys in Aberdeen; They took your for their Rector, and they asked you for a rule That should be a thing remembered when they came no more to school. And you told them that the Nature of your scientific ken Made a war a bloody pruning-hook to prune the earth of men. Did you know, my Lord, that Nature has the nature that we seek, Takes her bent, her cue, her bias, from the very word we speak? You said this thing, and, saying, you gave It fearful breath, For each word for peace Is life, and each word for war Is death. You hade your boys. Lord Rector, count this evil as a good, And the bidding has engendered the evil in their blood. If you have no better gospel for salvation -of the young, Then, in the name of Science, for God's sake hold your tongue.