Great Problems Solved by the War.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 132, 14 January 1916, Page 1 (Supplement)

Great Problems Solved by the War.

The war is an overwhelming misfortune. On that point we are all agreed, and just now we are very painfully conscious of it. We have lost the first splendid impulse with which we plunged into the struggle, the sense of great deeds to be done, the feeling that as a nation we were bound to embark upon the most glorious, if also the most arduous, enterprise in which we had ever been engaged, the rapture of patriotic exaltation/with which we. prepared to risk our all in a conflict for liberty and right. No." .ire we buoyed up, as we have sometimes, been in the past, by a series of rapid and triumphant successes, though our men fight with unequalled heroism. The war has become for us a gloomy, terrible business, dragging its wearisome length along, and offering but little hope cf that supreme and speedy victory which might compensate us for all the suffering and the wrong. We see nothing before us but a prolonged and exhausting etruggle, which we are determined to carry through till success is achieved, but which offers us for the moment little except the promise of further trials and greater sacrifices. Yet there is no cloud too black to have its lighter side. This war, with all its miseries and evils, has given us some compensations. It may be that they have been bought at far too heavy a price. Yet they exist, and they are worth noticing. The war is a great evil, but it is not a wholly unmixed evil. It has brought us come things which we should not have obtaiKed without 't; and if we look at these in the right spirit they may go nt least some way to offset the weighty load of misfortune that Prussian policy and militarism have inflicted upon us and the world at large.

THE IDEAL OF SACRIFICE. In the first place the war has brought home to all of us, in a living and actual form, the great idea of sacrifice. We had been living through cur easy, prosperous years of peace without very much thought of anything outside our own restricted circles of interests and desires. Some of us were religious, but our religion did not make excessive demands upon us. Some were patriotic, but cur patriotism was theoretical and rather shadowy. We went our unregarding way, endeavouring, If we were conscientious persons, to discharge cur public and private obligations, but on the whole mostly absorbed in our own affairs, and bestowing upon the needs of the community just so much of intellectual or spiritual effort as we could conveniently spare from our business, our sports, cur amusements, and our domestic affections.

Then, of a sudden, the call came, and somewhat to our astonishment we found that we were ready to respond to it. Nearly all of us in our several v.ays have been willing, and even eager, to make some sacrifice for that abstraction we call England. Three million liritcns, the youngest and the best of us, have come forward freely to endure toil and hardship, wounds and death, for a cause which has no vestige of personal egoism about it. it was almost worth while to have the war in order to obtain this unparalleled demonstration of self-surrender and selfforgetfulness. In the : ears of peace the preachers and the moralists were never tiling of uplifting their voices against selfishness, sloth, and luxury. They might have preached long, and

v.-y should have continued to believe that they were preaching in vain: but the great test lias bee;; put upon us, and it is seen that, after all, the selfishness and the sloth were but superficial integuments, sloughed oft' in a moment to reveal t'r.e true and splendid manhood beneath. Dukes' sons, tradesmen, artisans, day labourers, are working side by side in the camps and dying side by side in tiie trenches. That was the spirit that was latent in our Briton all through those comfortable years. It might have remained laie.it till it had become the mere ghost of :i memory if the war had not railed it into life and clothed it with new meaning. Barely this is a great gain, thai goes some way to rensele us tcr that long catalogue of martyrdom which is bringing sorrow a proud sorrow not unmixed vvllh joy into so many homes. THE ECLIPSE OF ['ARTY. Then, again, the war h:i.-- temporarily, at 1 ■■'■'-'- eliminated the party svstem from our politic?. Party may be a necessary element in a n preventative constitution like a.w own, but for many years past v,e have all romphinej of its obsessing lyrannies. Wo have lamented its increasing bitternesr, its perpetual encroachment upon sanity. moderation, and impartial judgment. We deplored these evis. though we almost despaired of finding a means to correct them. Isut now the war has come ruid swept tm m. for c time at hast, into oblivion. The party system has fallen, as it were, in a 'night. The politicians who were glaring at one another across the

HOW INDIVIDUAL BRITONS ARE CHANGING COLLECTIVELY WITH CHANGING BRITAIN.

By SIDNE Y LOW, M.A. In "The War Illustrated" .appeared a'n important article by sr. H. G. Wells, some months ago, entitled "Will the War Change England?" It was in the nature of a prophecy of tho effect of the great upheaval on our national temperament. Mr. Wells was hopeful of a rejuvenated Briton, tempered by the hottest fire of Armageddon, freed of the .alloy of irresponsibility and selfish individualism, and ' imbued solely with a sense of duty to his collective State. In the following article, specially written eight months afterwards for the same paper, llr. Sidney Low also demonstrates how "out of evil cometh good," and proves the accuracy of Mr. Wells' contentions. Readers will welcome this article by the distinguished authority on Imperial and Colonial history, as a review of the striking changes in social and economic Britain brought about by the war.

gangway of the House of Commons are now in intimate counsel together for the salvation of the Empire.

We scarcely remember that but a little while ago we were all party men. Which of us can pause to consider whether he is Liberal or Conservative, Protectionist or Free Trader, Home Ruler or Unionist, Radical or Socialist? We have almost got back to that Utopian condition "When none was for a party, *nd all were for the State." Let but the State be saved, and our parties and groups may take their chance. They may revive after the war or they may not. What does it matter? The main point is that we have only one party now, the party of Britain, and that is the thing that some of us had never hoped we should live to see.

ALL FOR THE NATION. Further, the war has put a salutary check upon our exaggerated individualism of the Englishman which had grown with our growth until it had become the creed of the nation in the nineteenth century. We believed in self-hel]), competition, personal freedom, the "enlightened selfishness'' of the old economists, which left each man to do the best he could for himself. It was a fine thing; but we were carrying it too far, until it threatened to produce economic chaos, and a war of classes moving rapidly towards revolution. Then the tocsin sounded; and we resigned ourselves to such curtailments of individual action as might have seemed almost impossible without a century of struggle. We have allowed the State to do all sorts of Liings in the interests ot the public welfare, such as we should nave angrily—and even desperately—resented" before, it may take ore,- our factories, it may fix our hour-; and conditions of labour, it may levy (.ail upon cur profits and perhaps confiscate them altogetnor, it may prescribe the terms en winch we sds.ill sell our la Dour and sell the products of them. It has said 10 us in effect: "Ycu do not belong to yourself alone, or even to your family: von belong to the community, and such things as the community requires of you*, those you will perform." And perform them we Jo with scarcely a sign of protest, except it nn; bo for some transient labour disturbances, that are rather a passing manifestation of the old ideas th in a serious attack upon the new. BENEFITS OF bI'ATE CO.VIKU",. Great problems which we havo discussed almost in despair for years suddenly rind their practical somlion. Reformers have asked that work shall be found for every wilkn:? worker and a living wage pro\ idea for all. It seemed the ideal of a future 'too remote to be seriously considered. But hero, undoi (he stress of war. and of the slatesocialism that war produces, we navo the problem very nearly solved. There is work for all wiio will do ■i --useful, necessary, and honourable work for nil who will do it—useful, necessary, and honourame woiic. .\o rr.e with a sound body ana a pair of hands need be idle now, >oi' need he compel led to work at starvation pay. The returns of pauperism ior August last aie absolutely tne lowest on record. There are fewer persons now receiving elianrable relic; from the btate than tliere have bee; at any time since tlie present l'oor Law system came into being, 'tne state 1-: giving less alms because u is giving more wages. When tins war is over it will oe asked why tne .state cannot do tor Its citizens in peac" what it has been forced to do 101 them in war. Is it only under the stress of an appalling external ang*r that we can take measures to exercise the spectre ot industrial distress'.' If we can provide work and a living wage for an m war tin??, 3hail we not be able to do the same thing also in time of peace? Here is one lesson (he war has taught n-, ,v.i.l it cannot be forgotti n. THE CHANCE FOR WOMEN'. And the war has taugn: u' another thing. It has gon ■ sotv way to solve the "Woman flmt Question vhioh was so ';.:,■ .itrig and perturbing us in ti-ri ■ of | eae<. Those who had insight \.e/: woli enough aw.no that all ;!i ■> eslravagnncn of Mffr.-gotiisni ;v d Up Ii!-' wore iu t'.'.o main symptoms of < conomic and social maladjustment. Women clamoured for the vote not so me !i Ihm iuise they wanted the \<,!" ii symbol of economic independence and social equality. Now (hi war has cniif. and the < hamjiions jn that other war have form ' worth! • ■ !••■!•■:. ;i;ii ions. They have vindica'o i Is.- ; r s'alus as citizens by i'p'owi;';'; theii'selvs into the very van d the pati iot V iii« .oment. and ■> i ploying t!io : i' ( imrgy and their iab-rl for tin national cause in the ambulances, in the hospitals, >n the reti< I' id di-'-tress, in recruiting, in the munition factories, in stimulating parotic ardour on the platform and '." the Press.

The economic opportunities r -"'.' women, opportunities which «"'« ?n strenuously emimod and so lan ::ii-t ; > -ranted, are i,r.v; accorded with a» iingriidilii'i hand. Women hnv ■i nlinle 1 iii tl e industrial army as lie, - ]y a.s men have enlisted in that nth: Army of the ramps an;, tin' biib I ■ There is work for m arly < vc i y woman who has the will and the rap-n | itv |o do il : and work which, if sii'l I not iih-ays ad'"tu::t"ly row irded '■ j ~,,,,,.,;.,..,,,. no longer p.-, iled as i, j i, wen. Ha- of an inf. rior -,v,\ , ,- v ji,, ;;:,■• . Wmu i n have s town t'vit j ,;,,,• r . ;ni ,]„ .. en's v.ork in all - :,- „ r ~,.;■!:•;-•;»■ and thov have ■•■ ti.l.dislicd llieir claim to smother,;; ; opproai bin:; the masculine scale i i j !•',.,„;•!•,( ration. So hero, also, is an- i other le von which the war has ; swiftly taught us, though we v n ■■ unable to learn il in the yens el peace: and that. too. i- a thing that will leave lasting effects, and some ~ sll lts that v, ill not wholly i ass jiway wh< n ib's period cf tribulation und sacrifice has come to its clcse.