WHAT WE ARE FIGHTING FOR

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2579, 29 September 1915, Page 18

WHAT WE ARE FIGHTING FOR

LIBERTY AND SECURITY [By Sydney Brooks.] What are wo fighting for? It would be ""ell that- oacli one of us, oil the eve of the first anniversary of tli© war, should ask himself this question ami carry away with him a clear answer. So may the noble mood in which wa entered on tlio strugglo be recaptured and fortified. So may tho national mind and heart, facing and weighing Ihc perils of this tremendous hour, expand to the measure of its utmost demands.

Wo took up arms to ensure that even the strongest Power shall not bo free to disregard treaties with impunity, and that even the weakest Power shall bo at liberty to live its own life. Our written word to Belgium, our spoken word to France, and all that was involved therein of honour, duty, and loyalty, drove us into the war. We sought nothing but to keep our shield without stain and our faith unbroken. Tlioso causes still stand, and from them every effort we make derives its sacred strength. But we see more clearly now than was possible a year ago that for us, too, as much as for any of our Allies, this is a war of solf-prosorvation. a war in which everything we are and have is at stake, J a war that reachos to the.very foundations of our existence as a free and self-governing people. If there are still those who think that an exaggeration let them ponder but a few of the unescapable results that must follow a German victory. If Germany wins every shred of Belgian independence will have vansihed, and Antwerp will become an unassailable German base menacing our whole south-eastern coast. And if Belgium goes Holland inevitably goes with it. To suppose that a. trimphant. Germany would quietly allow the Dutch to remain ns they are now, astride the Scheldt and the Rhine, with the key to Germany's front door in their pookets, and barring her out from the full freedom of the North Sea, is to suppose what is not merely incredible, but fantastically so. The wliolo Belgian and Dutch littoral would fall into German hands and a series of German Gibraltar would spring -up, the nearest of them only 60 miles from Dover, tho farthest less than 200 from Harwicn or Sheorness.

A Germany tlius established on tlio .Dutch and Belgian coasts and accumulating behiiid their defences plant for, an invasion of Great Britain would meaii that never again in this country should we have one moment's security. We should have to live year in and year out on a footing of instant readiness for war, ■ with Naval Estimates running into tho hundreds of millions, with military service ■ made universal and compulsory. But whatever efforts wo put forth Germany could surpass them. Secure in half-it-dozen unreachable strongholds from Antwerp and Flushing to, tlie Kifel Canal, she would merely have to wait and prepare.And one day the blow would fall, an immeasurably mightier blow than Napoleon over had it in his power to deal. It would not ho a raid; it would be an invasion. We might be able to repel it, or we might not, once, twice, three times. . But it would be-inces-santly Tenewed. Our Fleet, whatever happened elsewhere and however great tho need of i.fc in otlir parts of tlio Umpire, could never for a moment leave tlie North Sea. It would be menacled to tlie, supreme necessity of guarding against Germany. Sooner or later, by tho mere law of averages, Germany would break through. Great Britain would ho invaded as Belgium _ and Franco linve been invaded, but with a far greater passion of hatred,_ and 1 these famous islands might sink, in the

grim phrase of Sir Edward Grey, to bo "the conscript appendage" of their German conquerors. Theso aro not possibilities, but certainties, not things tliat may happen, but that must happen if Germany wins and Belgium and Holland become parts of the German Empire. But a German victory carries ivitli it greater consequences still. It implies the subjugation of France. It means that thero would bo nothing to prevent Germanj' demanding the surrender of the whole of the French Colonial Empire and of whatever ports or naval bases oil the northern coast of Prance she might care to choose.

Such a. triumph as Prussia gained in the war of IS7O might, if it were to be_ repeated to-day, load to Germany being planted not only as our hostile and intriguing neighbour iri Africa and Asia, but a? onr implacablo enemy in Calais, Havre, or Boulogne, and disputing with us the very freedom of the English Channel. For Germany wants and long has wanted what wo supremacy at sea, a world-wide Empire, u world-wido commerce and carrying trade. Sho„-lias struck for them. Wo are determined she shall not havo them. On her side it is a light for dominion and a universal overthrow; on ours it is a defensive fight for life and tho retention of all wo have won in tho past. What, then, is the goal wo seek? It is to maintain our liberties and possessions intact. It is to preserve the independence of France and tho small northern kingdoms. It is to ward ol¥ tho intolerable menace of a Germany entrenched upon their shores and plotting and preparing for onr destruction. But even that is not all. There is more at hazard still. The conflict that is now entering on its second year will decide for generations and perhaps for centuries the forms and spirit of civilisation itself through Western Europe. It is a struggle not merely of nations, but of irreconcilable ideals. ... What is the German ideal "we know. It is not the ideal of democracy or of peacc. It is the ideal of 'force. It is the conception that nothing connts in this world except the sheer mass of organised strength. It is the belief that soldiei-6 and sailors _ belong to a higher cast-e of human beings - than civilians. J It is a- disbelief in the people ill any and every capacity, except as the raw material for the drill sergeant. It is faith in absolutism and government from above and a profound contempt for Parliaments, a. free Press, and tho appeal to reason. Domination and aggressiveness arc its soul, its purpose, its mainstay ; popular freedom is its instinctive and inevitable foe. Its exalts discipline, repression, and order into a religion. It mocks at tlfe very notion that the common run of men have either a self-respect- that is worth considering or a power, of initiativo _ and of moral growth worth cultivating, or can over be trusted to look after themselves. Let Germany win and this gospel of despotism receives a new and indefinite lease; weaker nations will have 110 rights except such as 6he may choose not to deprive them of, every guarantee | oil which civilisation lias been built up will bo swept away, and from a welter of violated treaties and broken pledges there will emerge as the sole arbiter of human affairs the jack-booted God of Force. Let the Allies win and Europe is freed from the pestilential dogmas that have fostered militarism, democracy steps into tho sun once more, and thero may at length be a chance not only of striking off the burden of armaments but of redrawing tho map aleng the lasting lilies of race, jiationality, and justice. But until Germany is pegged down and made impotent thero can be neither peace nor security for ns or for any of of the Continental peoples. It is Great Britain's clarions privilege to-day, as it has been many times.in the past, to turn the scale aganst a pamoplieu Colussus seeking to stamp out the liberties of Europe. I-have no fear. She will play her part.—"Daily Mail." ,