MUST ARMAGEDDON COME?

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1000, 15 December 1910, Page 4

MUST ARMAGEDDON COME?

OUR CHANCES IF IT DOES. (By Telegraph.—Special Correspondent.! Christchurch, December 14. A peep into the future was essayed and a warning sounded by Professor .T. MacMillan Brown in the course of' his address at tho Technical College prizogiving ceremony this week. There were changes coining over the industrial world, he said—changes that would tell greatly upon tho future of this country. Tho industries cf tho world were getting into the hands of those nations possessing the greatest way departments. At the present time New Zealand was as far from the centres of commerce as any country (excepting the Antarctic) could be, but the Pacific Ocean was going to be the centre of enterprise and struggle. Of tuis the nations of Europe had become conscious, and they had. been trying 1 to seenro front'sections on its land surfaces. Within a generation this Dominion, would witness great happenings, and would become involved in world-wide' movements, and then it would bo that her marvellous possibilities and potentialities would be realised. The South Island, continued the professor, possessed , a great water-front lofty mountains 1 that would develop a mountainous and maritime people of the tvpe that had never been defeated ia war. This country, instead of being the tail, would become tho shield of the British Empire when there was waged the final struggle in human history— the Armageddon from which would be evolved the federation of mankind and the consummation of peace. Those who wanted pcaco at once had had their common sense obscured by their great ideals. There was going to bo a great struggle —"undoubtedly . a struggle that was not very far off. "If the British and we as a part of that Empire," continued tho professor, "aro not prepared for that struggle, we shall be trampled; under foot by tm autocracy—the greatest disaster that could befall mankind, for the British Empire is the guardian o£ human liberfr." In conclusion, . Professor. Brown declared that the statement that Britain was losing her commercial position wag a German "manufacture." Let them turn back the pages of history to the end of the eighteenth" and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, and they would find at that time a belief in the decadence of Britain. Yefc the decadent Britain, had built up a commerce and an Empire such as the world had never seen before. He had very few doubts about the struggle that was before them, for history had not a single instance to show them of' an island nation that had. retained its virility having been defeated upon the sea by. a. continental nation.