The Chronicle LEVIN: WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 4. 1916. PATRIOTISM FOR THE RISING GENERATION.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 4 October 1916, Page 2

The Chronicle LEVIN: WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 4. 1916. PATRIOTISM FOR THE RISING GENERATION.

A good. deal may 1)0 done in these <I;ivs to irrulcnte in the rising gefucr:tinn a sound patriotism. In the pai-t. to our judgment. there lias been a widespread tendency to mistake for patriotism the aspect which the Americans denote as "spreadeagleism," but tlu-re remains a sane and d,;>s : rahle spirit of patriotism that is altogether apart from the blatant and unbalanced •sort, that finds its chief exemplars in tli e Emperor of Germany, Theodore Roosevelt. Amd others in whom exist ihot-headied impulses that result in the plunging of nations into war withont reasons sufficiently grave to justify so awful a' resolve. "One's country right or wremg" is a -motto that has much to he said for it as wel 1 as against it on othienil grounds; ibut always anterior to the time at which the application of the spirit of that motto becomes desirable there i.s the period, in which political affairs might have been so ordered that internet']lie fighting conditions might not have been led up to. The present generation. wise after the events, recognises that Great-Britain's policy at the time ol tie l?iisso/Turkish War was not in the best interests ol pe ice and progress ..in the hast, and the ensurenient oi lasting, peace conditions: in fact, it i.s conceivable that but for the nursing by Great Britain of the Turkish Empire in the decade from 1880 there would have been no Turkish support ■for Germany in her present war of aggression: and, further, the Balkan •States may have become lvappier in rule and in domestic affairs than they have proved to be in the present century,—and so there would have been •a-.volded. the 'unhappy conditions' that eulbniuatod in the murder of the Servian (|iteen. and. later, the fatal attack on the Austrian- archduke. Had the latter murder not occurred, no doubt the German Emperor and his a'lly would have found some other pretext, at a later date, for embroiling the world ; but. at least, he would have found less support for his cause in the ■■Soar East, and the disastrous campaign in Egypt and the Dardanelles, where so many brave men laid down their lives to no tactical advantage for the Allies, had been avoided, and the struggle had been confined to European soil. There is need at all time*?--but more than usually so in these days--for the election to Parliament, whether

in Great Britain, .New Zealand or elsewhere, of people who are thinkers as distinguished from men who report merely party shibboleths. And if this ■is true of our ampin l , it i.s doubly true of our enemy countries, whose political standards tend to exalt the doctrine of force above the reason of brains. The present great war i.s focusing attention upon some basic subjects of politics that go ■by the board in times of peace.