The Manawatu Herald. Saturday, February 6, 1915. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 1357, 6 February 1915, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Saturday, February 6, 1915. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

An exceedingly interesting article appears in the “Round Table,’’ tracing the history of nationalism and liberalism and the rise of democracy in Europe in the century since Waterloo, and contrasting this review of European progress with the history of the British Empire during the same period. As a result of the inquiry into the past, it is shown that the British Empire has succeeded in doing what Europe has largely failed to do—that is, to enable nationalities to associate freely beneath a common system of government, In this respect it is the very antithesis of the German doctrine of ascendancy which believes that the rights of one nationality are necessarily destructive of the rights of all those which cross its path. The article is on more uncertain, but no less interesting, ground when it deals with the hope of maintaining peace by so reducing the number of sovereign governments in Europe that diplomacy will be simplified and the way cleared tor the establishment of a Concert of Powers stable enough to uphold international law. With this diversion into the unseen future, the article comes back to present possibilities, and concludes that the greatest human need in Europe to-day is the attainment of some principle of mutual respect and benefit, not of mutual contempt and extermination, and that for this purpose the greatest contribution the British Empire can now render to international progress and the general peace of the world is to save and maintain her own system of Government. Britain’s two-fold service to the world is to show that free nations, and not only free nations, but also backward peoples, may be associated together by consent in joint allegiance to a single commonwealth. No system of Government, except the British one, meets .every side of this problem. There is, therefore, a clear call to British people to fight for the triumph of this system of Government,

To the general public the chief interest of the Dunedin Central election lies in its immediate effect on the positions of parties, says the Wellington Post, but close students of political evolution may see signs that New Zealand is nearer to the day when the main parties will be Moderate Liberalism and Radicalism. The Opposition press has stated that the 1 Government’s friends tried to scare timid electors of Dunedin with a “Red Fed,” bogey, but the Ward Party’s helpers did not forget to flourish their own old turnip-ghost of “ Toryism.” The figures show that the cry “ Tory” fell on heedless ears. During the campaign Dunedin Central was described as “a workingclass constituency ” by a paper opposed to the Government, and this week’s issue of the Social Democrats’ official organ has this comment‘‘Only the workers could defeat Mr Munro. The Tories—the historic enemies of the working men—can never win without the working men's votes ; and every working man whose vote is recorded against Mr Munro will be consciously or unconsciously committing a gross crime against the cause of Labour.” Well, it seems that many workers, whose ears had been dinned for some weeks about “Toryism,” went with their eyes open to the booths, and used the secret ballot in favour of the Massey Government. It must be assumed that these workers —a large number, it would seem —voted that way in the belief that it would be better for them to have a Massey Government than a composite Ward Government, existing perilously on a basis of bargain and opportunism,

In an interesting review of the war covering its six months dura* tion the Auckland Herald estimates the total casualties killed, wounded and missing, as follows : German loss • • 2.500,000 Austrian loss 1,500,000 Austro-German total. . 4,000,000 British loss J 03,000 Belgian loss ... 5°) 0C) 0

French loss ... 500.000 Russinn loss ... 1,000,000 Servian loss ... 25,000 Allied total ... 1,675,00 c