Face The Blackboard

Waikato Times, Volume 118, Issue 19639, 27 July 1935, Page 13 (Supplement)

Face The Blackboard

N A DAY FOLLOWING the taking of £ Vimy Ridge, in April, 1917, I 1 I marched with the company to take over trenches in the new line in front of the ridge. Underfoot as we marched was the mire that April rains had made o the pulverised earth. We marched through a land that had been stripped of every vestifire of verdure. It was dull giey ana brown, the earth churned as by a giant hand, slptted with trenches, pitted \ul shell holes, forested with barbed wne and strewn with dead and their equipment Overhead the sun shone in a sky of cloudless blue, gloriously welcome after the weeks of rain and snow that lay ’behind us. At the brow of the ridge, just in front a ruined village, we sat down to rest, and resting looked down upon the country spread beneath us. After the fields through which we had just passed the country below was lovely beyond description. The shells had not yet swept it with their deadly hail, fields lay before us in a checkered pattern, fields igo.ft with the young green of sprouting wheat and barley, the darker green of meadows, the brown of newly turned sod. Through the fields the straight rulers of the roads drew their lines. At a far crossroads the red of tile roofs shone through a cluster of trees. It was

Lovely, Peaceful, Yet Sinister with the threat of war. No one movedmpon ■the roads. No smoke curled up from the chimneys of the houses. This lovely land beneath us was to be our new battlefield. Upon it we would fight the coming campaign. Across the face of that land we would work the symbols of our warfare, till the beauty was gone, the land £orn and shattered. Looking down upon those fields I felt suddenly aloof and separated from the war itself. I thought of the problems that had brought us lo Ibis war. And thinking so the fields before me took on a new meaning. Those fields, all the fields of earth, formed a huge blackboard upon which the nations were attempting to solve a problem. As I watched, a black fountain of smoko funneled up from the centre of one of the squares of green, a black fountain with a core of brilliant orange. The smashing, fearing roar of it came lo my ears so long ■after that it seemed detached from the black fountain I had seen. The smoko of the shell-burst lurched sideways and drifted lazily on the breeze to merge with the smoke of another explosion that spread Its black fan against the green. The bombardment had begun. Another segment of the earth was about to be made into desert, a Monument to Futility and Stupidity.

As I watched, the parallel of a blackboard grew. It was a blackboard on which were marked the figures representing the problerh of the nations, a problem that miist be solved. It was not easy of solution. Liko all problems, it required concentration, reason, intelligence to reach a solution. As I thought of it the shells were crashing into the fields below. They, picked out their hideous pattern on Hie greens and browns —the blackboard was becoming smeared and illegible. I could look ahead and sec it as it would bo in a few days, the fields obliterated, the bouses and trees reduced lo shards and splinters. 'Willi that thought came another one. I saw for a brief instant tiie nations as a class of school children facing a VhickboaVd on which was staled the problem that was theirs. The working out of that problem called for wisdom, patience, fortitude. And what bad we done? W c had sought to work the answer by force and stupidity. Instead of adding, subtracting and multiplying, we bad attacked Hie blackboard. ]| was'not a strained allegory. It was, in that moment as 1 watched guns leave their smoking prints on Hie race of the oarlh, very true and applicable. For the .nations, standing before 'tiie problem, wore

Solution of War Problem.

(An Old Soldier in Christian Science Monitor)

trying to obliterate it with a show J°rce. And then, when the problem was hidden they would call that a solution. The problem had been so difficult 'that in dismay and cowardice they had rebelled, as they had rebelled so often down through the cent- • uries, trying to hide the problem rather than solve it. ~ A few thinkers have recognised the truth of this. These men know that the Peace Conference which sought to untangle the web of differences, which sought to straighten and re-align divergent beliefs, was not really solving anything. What these men were doing should ; have appalled us, would perhaps if we had recognised it at the time. They were hut

Cleaning Off the Blackboard. The result of that conference was simply a re-statement of the problem, a re-marking of tiie symbols and figures that war had temporarily obliterated. Let us sum up once more the, results -of tiie war. 'Millions of men were slain. Millions of men and helpless animals suffered inconceivable tortures. Vast expanses of the earth’s surface were turned to desert. The wealth of tbc world had been squandered, nations were left bankrupt, some of them in the 'throes of rebellion and civil war. There was no other result. There was only misery, mourning and the shadow of the terror that-had passed. The figures on the blackboard were the same. Perhaps the problem was stated differently in parts. But it was essentially the same problem, the problem that the nations had evaded when 1 hev turned to madness and flung their projectiles of destruction at the face of the fields of France and Belgium. Europe was the blackboard upon which the problem had been stated. At this, blackboard they had turned their guns, Hung the cannonades of. their

Stupidity and Ignorance and Fear.

To-day the blackboard is again Ailed with figures, problems that must be worked out intelligently and courageously. If we, evade, progress does not. It goes relentlessly on, marking up new symbols, complicating the problem, setting forth fresh premises to challenge the growing and advancing knowledge of man.

War, then, begins lo appear before us as what it is. It has no entity of its own, no more than rebellion and stupidity have entity. It is simply the manifestation of stupidity and cowardice. The problem of war is an Individual problem. Again and again this fact must be driven home. Let each individual face his own responsibility. How does he feel In his heart when the problem involving his own and some other nations is presented? Does he face the fact that the problem must be solved, that a just and equitable solution must be worked out? Or does he turn his back on the problem and shout In indignation for war? In other words, does he square his shoulders and face the blackboard, chalk in hand? Or does lie seek to erase the problem with a handful of 'dust? There is

No Evading the Issue. Every problem, no matter how complicated, no matter how many nations or races it touches, is at heart Ihe problem of the individual. Were it not su such ideals as democracy, freedom, equality would long since have vanished from Ihe face of I lie earth. The face of llie earth! There lies our problem. It is our blackboard, with thesymbols of Iho problem marked thereon. As a soldier, 1 have seen Iho pitiful sears, (ho horror and Hie misery that is ours when men turn their backs upon wisdom and patience and understanding, and lling Ihe cannonades of their petty impatience and cowardice at that blackboard, it is a picture that should shame each one lulu buckling down to try to solve the present problems as they appear ■upon the board before us.