War with moral basis

YESTERDAY afternoon a large assemblage in the Octagon Hall took part in the united service arranged by the Clergy Committee of the Otago Patriotic and General Welfare Association at the request of the Mayor and councillors of Dunedin. Bishop Nevill gave an address, basing his remarks on the vision of the young man whose eyes were opened by the Lord to behold horses and chariots of fire round about the prophet Elisha, as narrated in the seventh chapter of Second Kings. The speaker said that this exhibition of care that God had for

His people of old led one to ask whether it was not possible for the angels of God to have some interest in the war that was being carried on in the world today. We were told that this was a war with a moral basis. It was not a war between nations for a strip of territory. It was a war for truth and righteousness, for the integrity of treaties, and for the liberty of the human race, and as the angels were the most perfect agents of God, surely they, too, would have an interest in the progress and consequences of the war. It was part of the eternal war between good and evil.

Mr J. J. Clark (Mayor of Dunedin) moved the following motion: ‘‘That on this fourth anniversary of declarations of a righteousness war this meeting of the citizens of Dunedin records its inflexible determination to continue to a victorious end the struggle in maintenance of those ideals of liberty and justice which are the common and sacred cause of the Allies.’’ As we believed we were fighting in this war,

not for our own selfish ends, but for the ends of righteousness and the ends of God, no apology was necessary for submitting the motion at a religious service on a Sunday afternoon.