A DEFENCE Of NERO.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 4, Issue 16, 26 February 1915, Page 4 (Supplement)

A DEFENCE Of NERO.

SOMEBODY HAS LIKENED THF. KAISER TO NERO.

This war is apparently going to hav-a tho effect of making us r.vise many of our standards. In our school days, far example, we wore instructed that Nero fiddling; whle Rome .was burning was the acme of brutal callousness. But why should it b:- so? Why should not Nero have fiddled under such circumstances? It was better than twiddling hi.3 lingers, or tearing his fiair, beating h : s breast, and gesticulating to high Heaven. I have known of a man who compos:d a fine sonnet while waiting to bo called on for Irs public examination in bankruptcy. Why shouldn't he? Imperial Britain's existence is at stake, they tell us —and yet some of our people fiddl:! The beating of tho wings of the Angel of Death is heard over our heads, and we go on with sonnets, and briekmaking and bootmaking biid brewing and baking as if there was nothing spoc'al doing. The armounrs laugh at each other's jests as they fiil tho moulds of pg-iron that are to go to thi> making of more engines of destruction. And why shouldn't they? Tho X-ro fetish o'wesseth us. Wo must have been very tame and unimaginative—some of us—in our idea* as to the human capacity for callous, ness. Xero lias easily 'be 11 outstripped. Wilhelm 11. can give him points. It may be very unseemly, of course, to bandy quips and jests in the preseno? of a world-wide tragedy. But our Tom. mies are irrepressible, even'incorrigible. For them th-- war is "all in the day's work." There may be few Xeros amongst them, but they are mostly invincible optimists and they have no use for th* solemnities of German "kultur." We seo the distinction l>etween them and tho enemy in the contrast between "IHa Wacht am Rhein" and "It's a long, long way to Tipperary.'' And, after all, can any 0 f "s deny that the strain.3 of tho latter would have scundid very well coming even from Xero's fiddle? Xero was not so black as he was painted; but it would be difficult to paint the Kaiser blacker than he is. With poor Xero it has been a case of "Give a dog a bad name, and lie will hang for it.' But Kaiser Bill wasn t given his execrated name. He chose it for himself. His inane ambition for domination has involved the whole world in war. He has marched through murder and rapine to achieve his ikndi.sh ends, claiming all through sane, tion. approval, help, and even th? cooperation of Almighty tiod. He has Hung millions 0 f his own people into tho pit of d ath. He has ravaged and desolated tho homes cf unoffending noncombatants, and then declared to tho world that his heart bled for Lou vain. Nero! Xero was a lamb compared with the bully w'th the mailed fist who. it may .safely he averred, cannot fiddle for nuts. The brute is never a humourist. Xera bad s-une humour—that savins grace—about him. Why should we insult him by classing him with such n p rvcrt?