THE WHEREFORE OF WAR.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1749, 21 August 1917, Page 1

THE WHEREFORE OF WAR.

“Why do ye light Germany.’" is the i|!iesliun asked and very trenchantly answered by Ah' Franklin K. Lane, United Stales Secretary Tor the Interior, a great personal friend and a most trusted lieutenant of I'residenl Wilson, in'“The Railroad Trainman.''' “AVliy,” he asks, “arc we lighting GermanV s ? The brief answer is that oars is a war of seif-defence. We do not wish to light Germany. She made the attack upon us; not on our shores, but on our ships, our lives, out* rights, our future. For two years and more we held to a neutrality that made us apologists for things which outraged man’s common sense of fair play and humanity. At each new offence —the invasion of Belgium, the killing of Belgian civilians, the attack on Scarborough and other defenceless towns, the laying of mines in neutral waters, the fencing off of the seas —and on and on through the months, we said: ‘This is war —-archaic, uncivilised war, but war! All rules have been thrown aAvay: all nobility: man has come down to the primiliye brute. And while we cannot justify, we will not intervene. It is not our war.’ Then why arc we in ? Because we could not keep out. .America speaks for the world in fighting Germany. Mark on a map (hose ' countries which are Germany's Allies, and you will mark hut four, running from the Baltic through Austria and Bulgaria to Turkey. All the other nations, the whole globe around, are in arms against her or arc unable to move. There is deep meaning in this. AW light with the world for an honest world; for a world in which nations keep (heir word; for a world in which nations do not live hy swagger or hy threat; for a world in which men think of the ways in which they can conquer (lie common cruellies of nature instead of inventing more horrible cruelties to inflict upon the spirit and body of man; for a world in which the ambition of a few shall not make miserable all mankind; for a world in which the man is held more precious than the machine, the system, or the State.”