The Dominion. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1912. WAR.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1605, 23 November 1912, Page 4

The Dominion. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1912. WAR.

5 — ■ Fok over a month the public of every civilised country has giyen the most part of its attention to a very sanguinary war. If there were any fundamental human at the back of the current "anti-militarist" agitations and violent "peace movements," the governing sentiment of the public would be a deep and growing misery and despair, not merely at the incidental terrors of- the war, but at the mere fact that war was proceeding. We need hardly say that such has not been the attitude of the New Zealand people or of any other people. War is terrible, and to be avoided where avoidance is reasonably possible. Everyone is. shocked at tho extent of the bloodshed which has been found necessary, or made necessary, in the rising of the Christian Allies against the Ottoman Turk. But nobody save a few anaemic theorists can have felt, or persuaded themselves that they felt, that tho war is what the extremo "peace party," in times of peace, declare war to be, viz., a "plot upon civilisation," and a ''reeling back into the beast." This phrase has. indeed, been often used by those whom we may call the defamers of war; and yet Kino Arthur,_ and the Tennyson who spoke for him and through him, would have said that England could only "reel back into the beast" by throwing away her armour. He would have said—in many a great poem he did say, or imply—that war can be a good and fine thing, as every great poet and every great writer has also said and implied. Peace may be "a base sleep beside an idle spear." There are worse things than warIt is the fashion, in a day very favourable to superficiality and sentimentality, to glorify peace, and condemn tfar, on wider than economic grounds. ■ In the piping times of peace there is a ready audience for anyone who can in tolerably good language argue that peace is greatest aim a nation can have. But when war comes the old eternal fact _comoa forth that men are men, that

nations are nations, and that jiv and nations live true to the laws that made them. An enormous amount of economic waste has resulted from the war in the Balkan peninsula, and an enormous loss of strong men. Yet the moral gains will outweigh tho material losses, and not the smallest gain for the world outside tho ring will be tho reminder that nations will, and, in some circumstances, must, go to war. _ Consider what would be the position if the Balkan States had acted accm'djng to the doctrine that war is an offence against civilisation and an injury to the soul of the nation that engages in it. Ono has but to stato the ease to destroy the moral ease of the antiwar sentimentalists. The other day we were briefly informed by cable of some outspoken observations by tho Anglican Bishop of Bathurst. He expressed a wisn that tho Powers would allow tho belligerents to fight it out, and he was promptly accuscd of taking up an "un-Clmstianlikc attitude. He retorted liko a brave man and valiant Churchman. "I am no lover of war," ho said, "but at the same time I hold that there are worso things than war, and that the condition of the peoples of the Balkans for the past 500 years has been worse than war." Perhaps there have | been in Britain faint echoes of the thin and foolish rage of " Baron d'Sstouiinelles de Constant's wild "opeu letter" to Kino Nicholas when that fiery old man lit the powder train, but it is quite certain that tho English people, while sorry for the necessity that war should break out, were bo entirely convinced that war was indeed necessary as not even to think of the smooth sentimentalities that fill up so many paps in the jaded leisure of' peace-time. Even the professional peace-mongers and war-denouncerß in the Radical party at Home have_ been wide awake enough to realise that their protests and lamentations would be absurdly irrelevant in the presence of the great fact_ which has blown away their theories—the fact, namely, that a big war is on, and tnat the world recognises that it is a proper \ war and a natural phenomenon. ' v A few weeks ago, in ono of his Daily News articles, Me. G. K. Chesterton bemoaned the disappearance of "a certain sort of Liberal who largely dominated the last great Liberal century," the man who "did most of the dirty work of cleansing Europe of a guite diseased and festering feudalism." He meant "the soldier of freedom, the Radical Militarist"—the man at the opposite pole from the Pacifist Liberal of to-day. ■Mr. Chesterton described his own position in these words: "Though I and every other Liberal would like to see a just treaty between the nations, I should dislike any peace that forbade us to,'fight for Bolivia against America or Poland against Russia." This is the attitude of nearly every civilised man in the world, Ana most men, in every country, would go further and say, af,ter .searching his heart, that lie would hate any arrangement; which would restrain him from helping his country • into a fight for its 1 own honour. Mr. -Chesterton asked what had,happened that had "linked Liberalism with peace at any and Toryism with war at any price," and "at,the risk of seeming fanciful" he suggested that > lost-its soul from the w'h'itt he appears to believe was an unjust and immoral'war in South Africa. Mr. Chesterton does not merely seem, but actually is, very fanciful here. For he is despairing without cause, to begin with. There is a small section of iitra-Radicals—men who are sure Germany is a dear, good-natured, peaceful, and very-much-pained country, who hate the Triple Entente, who boil over' with sympathy for Hindu and Egyptian assassins—there are a few people of this kind who would prefer that no blood should be shed either for B'olivia or for Poland. But • the bulk of the British Liberals are not like this. They are men before they are Liberals, and they will only begin to shudder at war, tho thing itself, when they cease to bo men with human instincts. War is not a blessing to be prayed for, but it is not an unmitigated evil. It can be, and it nearly always has proved to be, a great tonic and antiseptic, stirring nations to new life and purging them of the elements of decay.