The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 1918. PEACE

New Zealand Tablet, 14 November 1918, Page 25

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 1918. PEACE

T it is over. After four and a quarter years of bloodshed and slaughter, turmoil and passion, sorrow and suffering, the 0" weary armies have laid aside their arms amid the ruins and the devastations wrought b-y the fierce avalanche of war, from the English Channel to the Alps ** and from the Alps to the Adriatic. We have as yet no notion as to what the final terms may be, nor did any pause to think about terms when the definite tidings that came this morning relieved the tense strain of expectation of the past week. Peace has come : that has been enough for most people now ; for that means the end of the years of anxiety and uncertainty ; the end of fears for what each new dawn might bring ; the end of suspense as the casualty lists poured in after the battles ; the end of the dread that a still heavier burden of grief might yet be imposed on shoulders already sorely laden. What wonder then that the reaction drove old and young to find relief for their feelings in the usual childish ways of making the air vibrate with awful noises all the morning, broke down the barriers of age and made grave people like school-children again, as they were caught in-the tide of that “organised spontaneity” of rejoicing which our press has been gravely lecturing us on for some time past. * Peace- has come; and that is the main thing. Later we shall know the terms, and later the nations shall assemble for that great reconstruction of the world which we have been promised as the sure reward for all that we have-endured. We had nothing to say to the making of the war ; and we shall have nothing to say to the making of terms. The thing that most concerned us in the past was the slaughter; and the thing that most concerns us now is that the slaughter is over. Many of us have believed from the beginning that the war was a scourge of God on a sinful world, and now we thank God that the scourge is stayed and the people given time to enter into themselves and repent.

We have prayed every morning since the war began for this day. If we have not gone forth and prayed at street corners we have prayed in the early hours while most of the world still slept. If we have not joined in advertised public prayer-meetings, we have been bound by our superiors to pray day after day, no matter whether we prayed alone or in the midst of our own people. And now we will pray the God of Peace to accept our humble thanksgiving that He has heard us, and to make of the past years of blunder and terror stepping-stones on which we may all rise to better things. While we rejoice with those to whom peace has meant safety for the dear ones who bore the heat of the day unto the very end, let us not forget to sympathise with those whose soldier 6ons, or brothers, or husbands, or friends will march no more on this earth, —those who have carried their cross already, borne their loss, and been purified through its revelation of suffering. Throughout all the land there is no home, no individual, that has not felt the weight of the cross; and for them all we can pray no better prayer than that they all be made better by their loss and find in it such consolation as we know many have found. And while we rejoice, while we prepare to welcome those who will come back to us carrying their sheaves, let us not forget the souls of the dear dead who may not come back any more and whom we are bound on a thousand titles never to forget. The irresponsible feeling of joy that sweeps through all to-day will soon pass away ; let not the memory of the dead, and the mindfulness of our obligations towards them pass so readily. And though we will linger in thought by the distant graves Ave shall never see, let us think far more of the souls that have not been shut in narrow graves, but liberated to prepare for the sight of God through a purification in which we can help them though they cannot help themselves. Once again in this month of November this thought is insistent; and with no better thought can we celebrate the news of the great peace for which the dead fought and died. * Surgit amari aliquid! We are told now that the downfall of oligarchy has been consummated, and that the small nations of the world have been freed. We are told that the war aims for which our men were called to fight have been achieved, and that all id well at last. Here is where the disappointment comes in. in this clay of wild jubilation our thoughts turn inevitably towards that land in the western seas where Erin still sits in chains, and we ask ourselves what of the rights of small nations where she is concerned, what of the destruction of that Orange oligarchy which has kept her in chains against the will of her people, and against the will of the whole world ? . And as we look at the stern facts of her case we are reluctantly compelled to deny that the dire curse of oligarchy has been removed and that the rights of small nations are established. And these were the things for which we were asked to fight! Consider the plain fact that the British people three times registered their votes in favor of allowing Ireland to govern herself, in conformity with that solemn enactment ratified by an English Government only to be shamefully torn up and thrown to the winds as a scrap of paper; consider that a clique, largely composed of men who plotted with the Kaiser for the overthrow of the British Constitution, and who incited the British Army to mutiny, successfully defies the will of the British people, even though by so doing they have enabled it to be said all over the world that Britain was by her acts contradicting all her high-flown war aims and was actually doing to Ireland the things of which she accused Germany of doing to Belgium; and reflect then whether oligarchy has indeed been destroyed or no, and whether the cause of small nations has been vindicated. There is the rift in the lute this morning for twenty millions of us who belong to the greater Ireland, and who will not consider that Europe or the world has been freed from despotism and oligarchy until the last vestige of the Orange domination has been trampled in the dust and the men who plotted with the Kaiser and bought

his guns share in his ignominy which-they, ; as traitors to their country, deserve more than he. In the meantime, while we are thankful to God for the gift -of peace, we are regretfully obliged to conclude that our war aims have not yet been realised: oligarchy is intact, and a small nation lies under the heel of an illegal secret society. Had that society anything to do with the fact that Mr, William Massey was the only Premier of a self-governing Dominion who did not call on England to grant Home Rule to Ireland during the war? If so we have had enough of him as well as of the secret society which still boasts at home of its German rifles. Thank God for peace, and pray that He may give us honest politicians soon.