HOPE FOR BEST

Waikato Times, Volume 124, Issue 20694, 3 January 1939, Page 7

HOPE FOR BEST

NEW YEAR MESSAGE WORLD FULL OF DANGERS PREPARE FOR THE WORST (Official Wireless) (Received Jan. 3, 11 a.m.) RUGBY, Jan. 2 The Archbishop of Canterbury, in a New Year’s broadcast, said: — “In a confused situation, in which it sometimes seems that the whole world is going mad, thankfulness for deliverance in the past gives way to fear of new dangers which may come in tiie future. The way of sanity and strength is to prepare for the worst and hope for the best. To prepare for the worst is indeed a bounden duty. “In a world full of threats and dangers we dare not neglect the defence of the lives, homes and liberties of our people and of all that men care to live for, but all the while we must hope for the best. To speak and think as if it is sure to come may even help to make it come.

“We must go forward in a spirit of national unity. Parties there will be, and must be, but uniting them all is the value we all set on the tradition of liberties and the way of common life embodied in our democracy. We must go forward in pursuit of peace. “In the present condition of this disordered world we are beholding a judgment day. It is our oncevaunted civilisation that is being judged. Think of millions of people in China driven homeless and helpless before the ruthless armies of a civilised Power. Think of the thousands turned adrift into the

world by the relentless persecution perpetrated by a highly civilised State. In spite of a*! hopes of progress, are these not signs of a return to the dark ages? “Surely it is being made plain that civilisation cannot save itself. Its salvation, Us redemption from the downward tendencies always at work within it, must not come from itself, but from another world—the spiritual world.”