Mangonui County Times AND NORTHERN REPRESENTATIVE. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1904. THE WAR.

Northland Age, 20 September 1904, Page 2

Mangonui County Times AND NORTHERN REPRESENTATIVE.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1904. THE WAR.

“Wh»t right, what true, what fit wo justly call, Let this be all my care—for this is all." —Pope.

Now that the war in the Far East—in which, according to Russian belief, the Island Empire was to be blotted out in the spaedfe twenty-one days—has stretched over a period of several months, interest in the movements of the hostile forces is largely waning. To-day we live in an atmosphere of perpetual change. We must have each week something new, something exciting. What has happened once becomes stale, dull, unworthy of notice. The tragedy which held our breath yesterday is a shadowy memory to-morrow. Carlyle speaks a bitter truth: “But indeed man is and was always a blockhead and dullard; j much readier to feel and digest! than to think and Mere use and wont evorywher® leads him by the nose ; thus lfl but a rising of the sun, let bfl a creation of the world bapjflß iwicc, and it ceases to be vellous, to be noteworthy H| noticeable.” Thus it is that stirring events in the almost unnoticed. Yet of ■§§ far-reaching effects of this flict, and its influence world’s destiny, who can Already threatens at danger of foreign through the tile

- m are bayoneted,—to feed ''some personal spite in such rulers, to satisfy some private greed, to promote the ends of some political party! It is not pretended that it will be the deserving side that shall emerge triumphant ; justice if on the weaker side will be shouldered to the wall—cruel brute force alone shall gain the victory. When the “ Petropavlovsk ” was blown up in this war, the death-roll included Vassili Verestchagin, Russia’s most famous artist. In his younger days he had charged with infantry, skirmished with cavalry, led soldiers to the assault. He declared that there is only one kind of war. ! .“War is the antithesis of all morality, of all humanity. There has never been but one kind of war since the beginning of the world —that is the war in which ydu endeavour to kill or inflict as much suffering upon the enemy as possible.” Is it too much to hope that ere long men will guide themselves by Reason rather than by Passion, and that national as well as private disputes will be submitted to the arbitrament of Justice rathei than to the chance of the sword: