GOD OR MAMMON?

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 24 May 1917, Page 3

GOD OR MAMMON?

THE WORLD'S MISTAKE

The old Biblical story of ' the hiding of a talent in a napkin " has never

been better exemplified in the practical history of the world than it has been on the field of hostilities. Britain has been supposed all along to have been unprepared fur war, and to have been relying- solely upon her first line o!i defence—her navy— and letting the second line take its chance in case of the rare possibility of an invasion. Never has a national fallacy been more promptly exploded, for her men-at-arms have played quite a? an iu-portaut. part in the war as her men at sea. Writing upon this interesting national characteristic. Mr A. Glutton Brock, in the London " Times," says : —

On ono point the German and the rest of the world has been mistaken about us. They thought that we wer9 weak when we were only lazy, and timid when we were only scep>tical. We have been sceptical "about Jl things because we could not persuade ourselves tuat there was nothing worth having but material success; and yet we could not clearly conceive of -ornething better -worth having. We could not make up our minds to serve either God or Mammon, because we did not much like -Mammon, and we were not very sure of God's existence.

That has been the attitude of the ordinary decent Englishman for a generation or more, whatever class he may belong to. He has been a little out of conceit with the modern world and not in cor.cc it with any-' tiring olse. Qe has, as it were, suspended judgment on all things, and meanwhile he has tried to satisfy himself with being decent and with liking other decent people. He has tried to do his duty, but he has not thought it possible that anj duty might become a passion to him. So he has seemed'1 to himself to be livihg in a slack tide of time, between a past that he cannot believe in and a future that has not declared itself ; and, meanwhile, the German has thought that the future was his and that he could maice it as ugly as he chose.

And the world has believed more and more that the future is the German's. Hefore the war we were losing om prestige even among nations that liked us. No one looked to us for ideas.; no one asked even what was doing iv England, for it was assumed that nothiug was doing. We were supposed to think of nothing but being gentlemen and sportsmen. We had the secret, it was thought, oc living very agreeably on our own past ; and the Kaiser came over here and enjoyed the English holiday life as much as noblemen in the eighteenth centmy enjoyed the holiday life of Yeuice.

Certainly we had hid our talent very dangerously in a napkin ; and for this reason the German and the pacifist alik-e say that the present Trar is our fault. We had no right to seem so much jmore frivolous and lazy-and .weak than we were; and now we and the Germans and all the world are paying for the mistake they made about us. They have convinced us at least that the war against them is worth waging. We do not suspend judgment on that point. The future which seemed to us so vague and distant has rushed in upon as, and whether we will or not we have to play our part in makingl it.

In two years a new age seems to have begun; and we hardly know ourselves, since Aye, too, are a part of it. There is a real good and a real evil, a real Mammon and a real God; and for both men will give theiv lives. We have to learn the technique, at least, of war; we, the nation of amateurs, have to face the nation of professionals; and if we were beaten we could cot flatter ourselves that we were right not to have our hearts in the game. It is quite clear to us now that something is serious, that we must serve someone, but is it to be God or Mammon ? That is still the question before us, and success in the war will not settle it for us. The Germans set to work with immense industry and seiiousness to make what they behevou to be civilisation; can we, with the same industry and seriousness, now try to make what we believe to be civilisation ? And, more important *till, cannot we make a tr.ide civilisation tha; will put to shame the devious methods that the Germans have adopted in the markets of the world for too many blind-eyed years ?