SOME GAINS OF WAR

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 215, 30 May 1918, Page 6

SOME GAINS OF WAR

AS SIR WALTEB EALEIGH SEES THEM. "I am told that' a new kind of peerage, very haughty and very self-import-ant has arisen in [wuth London. Its members are those householders who havo been privileged to have Anznc soldiers billeted on them." lu happy phrase, Sir Walter Italeigh, Professor of iiiiglisli Literature at Oxford, thus referred to the privates' ties brought about by the war, which, ho said, made tho fine meshes of the web of Empire. Sir Walter was speaking at the Caxton Hall, with Mr. Astjiiith in the chair, on "Some Gains of the War." The clearest gain of all vns that after the war the--English language wouid have such a position as never before. The greatest gain of all, the entry into tho war of America, assured tho triumph of our common Inuguage and our common ideals. On the questou of a League of Nations, Professor lialcigk appeared soinetrkat pessimistic. Such a league might do good, but he was sur.prised that anyone! who had imagination and a knowledge of th... facts should entertain high hopes of it as a full solution. A League of Nttiohe to-day hud given a verdict against the Central Powers, which wae being enforced by the most terrible war in Jvistory. If that vordict had been given before the war Germany might havo accepted it and refrained, but she would have felt herself wronged. Sho would have deferred tho war, and would have set übouit making a party for herself among tho nations of ihe league. Who could be confident that she would have failed either to divide her judges or to accumulate such elements of strength that sho might dare to defy them? The best hope seemed to him to lie in paying chief attention to tho improvement of war rather than to its abolition. Style was often more important than matter, and this war would Jiot liuve been so fierce and prolonged if it had not become largely a war on a point of style. If the Germans had behaved huinaneiy and considerately to the civil population of Belgium, if they had kept their-solemn promise not to use , poison gas, ii they hat. refrained from murder at sen, if their valour had been accompanied by chivalry, the war might now have been ended, perhaps not in their disfavour, for it would not have been felt, as it now is, that tljj}' must be defeated at no matter what cost, or civilisation would perish.