THE WILL TO WIN

Hokitika Guardian, 20 February 1917, Page 4

THE WILL TO WIN

Praise for Britain Mr Edison on the Rise to Real Democracy London, Dec 11 Germany miscalculated when she ignored the British. She has written mere and known leas about human psychology than any other nation in the world’s history. She thought the British .were too slow, too soddeD, to get into the war before Belgium had been stolen, France had been defeated, and Russia had been checked. England has made many mistakes. She has kept wages too low, and the drink bill too high; and her people for a long time could see that the war against Germany ia a war for progress against retrogression, for humanity againßt brutality. But though the Englishman is slow, when he starts he can’t be stopped. Momentum will carry him much further than it will the Germans, the French, or the Americans. This tribute is from a remarkable interview Mr Edward Marshall haa had with a great American —Thomas Edison. Mr Edison thinks England is as dangerous to the German aggressor as she ever was. Germany thought when England rose from her lethargy that it was a case of revolt against her Government. BENCH OR TRENCH. “ What nonsense ! The Englishman is his own government. When his Government fails to satisfy him, ho changes it, and he changes it without . revolution, for he has the constitutional machinery with which to change it peaceably—and it wouldn't matter i if he hadn’t; he would change it just | the same if ho really disliked it. “ But, believing that no shock could wake him, Germany directed at him I J the greatest shock the world has ever known. At first it looked as if she | might succeed. . . But England had to win, so the Government stepped ( in and became the general employer in vital matters, running up the weges to a tempting point and keeping the beer down to a safe point. As soon as this was done the English workman went to his bench or to his trench. “If it was the bench he went to, he found that something had been done to it. No longer was it littered with archaic tools, to be need in working out arohaio plana. No. Emergency was really at hand. Shock had worked again. ... “There is still another and a greater gift which Germany through this war has given to the placid nation which she envied. She raised British wages, she forced labor-saving machinery into England, she suddenly lifted Britons from the slough of sodden drunkenness in which they had been wallowing, she saved her from a sex-war, and more than doubled her effective industrial population by presenting her with a womanhood which she had refused to recognise in days gone by. Britain’s new soul. “And daring all these things she did the greater thing, she gave Britain a new son!. It is the sonl of real democracy, the modus operandi of and the impulse toward a real 00-opera-tioD. . . . “ Ooly three European Governments

will endure, I think—the British, the French and the Swiss, Britain is as republican as our own United State?, The King is its social head, but Parliament makes its luvo. A new order is coming everywhere, and it will be the republican order. The non-repub-l'oan Governments will die. They will die hard, perhaps, but they will die ere long. The people of the world undoubtedly have willed that they shall ba their own masters, and what the people will is sure to come to pass.”

Mr Edison was asked if he did rot feel that some understanding might in the future be desirable between Britain and the United States, for their mutual protection and that of the world. THE PEOTLE'S CONVICTIONS. “I don’t believe we need any official understanding,” in the sense in which you use the term,” said he. “To a'l iatents and purposes the people of tie British Dominions are Americans—that is, they find their animating impulse in the same source from which ours is derived—love for and belief in democracy as the best form of Government. In the convictions of the two peoples, we now have a treaty more binding than anyono could put on paper. 1 believe that 6very really good American recognises the fact that Britain and France really are fighting onr battles, and I think that thote who do not believe this either are not good Americana or are very ill-informed Americans. . . . “British sea-power has been a good thing for the United Stptee. It haa been as valuable to ns as it has to Britain. It has been valuable to all mankind, including the very nations which are now fighting against it. Personally, I hope, and I am sure tbat the best Americans generally hope that it never will wane in force or in moral. To me the Jutland battle was one of the most glorious in all Britain's history,”