KAISERISM AND ITS MENACE TO THE WORLD.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 165, 14 April 1916, Page 1 (Supplement)

KAISERISM AND ITS MENACE TO THE WORLD.

Amongst those who deserve well of their country at the present time, the name of Mr. Arthur Balfour stands out prominently . Not so prominently as it ought by a great deal. Here is a man who led the House of Commons for a longer continuous period than any other statesman sin e Walpole, who has held with distinction the highest offices under the Crowi including the premiership itself, wno has earned and entered upon a period ''f comparative leisure and cultured retirement. Yet in the nation's hour of need' he places his talent and experience ungrudgingly at the service of the Government of the day and finally takes charge of one of the most difficult and responsible posts in the administration of an old political opponent, a man younger than himse'f. THE TENSION AT THE ADMIRALTY. If this is not admirable I do rot know what is. Amid all the bickering and intriguing that has been going on since the formation of the present Min istry it never has occurred to anyone to accuse Mr. Balfour of self-seeking

about enough of it? But anyhow t doesn't seem likely to last long. Hum an beings at large are working hard to make an end of it, and the sooner the I tetter I should say; it has been no great success. Our cursed' race has gone mad and is committing suicide as fast as ever it can. It might be a mercy to shorten the process. You me holding Intercessory Services at the City Temple. 1 suggest that you ask Almighty God to throw humanity on the scrap heap."

These were perhaps not the precise words which Mr. Shaw thus pungently expressed himself. They may be less forceful. But they give the general sense of them, and I do not think ho

ON THE KIEL CANAL.

or of being animated by any other motive than that of doing his best to strengthen Mr. Asquith's hands for Britain's sake.

He might very well have expected the highest place in a Coalition Govern ment considering his record, influence and ability. But, no, lie takes what is given him and is content to occupy a subordinate position at a table whero for many years he has never sat except as chief. Mr. Churchill's withdrawal from the Admiralty created a situation of extreme difficulty and tension. Mr. Balfour calmly stepped into it although in his long career ho had never boon head of that department before; and the whole British public heaved a sigh of relief when it heard that he had done so. The crisis was past; our naval future was safe. We could l get back to our wrangling again without any fear of alarming interruptions to our favourite pastime.

MR. BALFOUR THE PHIL OSOPHER.

But this is not what I set out "u write just now 7 . It only came up b> association of ideas, so to speak, li was not Mr. Balfour the statesman 1 was thinking of primarily, but Mr Balfour the philosopher and man of learning. And I could not help recalling our debt to the one while consider ing the jther. I was pondering a suggestive remark he onco made in an address before Cambridge University the Henry Sidgwick Memorial Lc-etiire, 1 think t. was. He said that wc of the modern florid were witnessing an entirely new thing in the story of human develop ment. Hitherto within the period of recorded history, one civilisation had followed another, each occupying its own special patch of the earth's sinface, having its own distinctive characteristics, continuing for a certain definite period long or short, and then passing away to lie replaced by anothei on different ground, the work of a dif ferent race, and with a different des tiny. But now, he pointed out, for good or for ill we are evolving one vast, complex, workj-wide civilisation, a civilisation which soon or late will gathe! all the peoples of the earth into its embrace. What then ? Here: is a new problem for mankind to solve. If this civilisation of ours perishes like the local ones of old what is going to take its place? Where are we to look for the revivifying influence that, coming originally from new races, made goo:l the failure of a wornout ancient society? This is an impressive generalisation proceeding from a master mind. And it is true to the fact* as well as tins question to which they give rise, ■» question with portentious implications at the present hour when civilisation c.ooms to be doing its utmost to destiov itself. A GF.ORGF RFR \ \RD SHAW GREETING. I inet Mr. Bernard Shaw in Oxford Street one dav last summer, and leehanietcristically ncrosted me thus"Well, what do you think of civilisation now? Don't you think we have ha 1

would object to my reproducing them here. Their cynicism is only apparent and represents the disappointment of idealists in general with the course affairs have taken in these last days. What is our civilisation intrinsically worth. \ What guarantee of permanency lias it that its predecessors had not? It is a 'question worth looking into. What Mr. Balfour said about the civilisations of old is undeniable. They were all limited both as to race and to the territory occupied . I might add that they were limited in time succession also; as one rose another fell; as a new ono came to the birth, an older was overthrown or sank into decay. Thus we have the civilisation of China, no one knows how old but very ancient, practically shut up to itself, possessing characteristic features which distinguish it from all others. It reaches a certain point and then it stops. As far as can be ascertained it has not made the slightest advance for ages. It is a case of arrested development, ana unoue at that. INDIA'S HISTORY. India has its own history not at all like China's. Long long ago it topped a high point of excellence both materially and intellectually. In certain ways that attainment has never been surpassed. But a blight fell on it; it became moribund. Babylon, that great city of the plains and seat of one of the most formidable empires of the ancient world —itself a namo that has survived into our own time as a symbol for soulless materialism and vicious abundance —going back to an anitquity as remote as ten thousand 8.C., and producing a literature and science the very memory of which has lieen lost —what of Babylon to-c.ay ? Our troops advancing from the Persian Gulf are fighting over its ruins, and many of them perhaps do not even know it. The descendants of that imperial race of a long forgotten world have lost all sense of continuity and become merged in other and younger peoples. We do not know where to look for tl.em nor how to trace a link between them and tlio folk who erected the colossal structures—monuments, elaborate plants for irrigation, and the like—tfiat lie strewn about the plains of Mesopotamia. FORCES THAT HAVE PASSED. And so one might go on. Assyria, that land of fierce and ruthless warriors, the Prussia of three thousand years ago; Persia, with its mighty Cyrus, tno Napoleon of his day; Egypt, that home of mystery and occult lore —what do we know about them all? Kings prophets, sages they produced, men of the sword and men of the mind, and passed; the very names of most of them were writ in water. From the summits of the Pyramids forty centuries look down upon you," grandiloquently cried i>;/napaito to his soldiers, lie might have snid a lundred and not Ikhmi far wrong, but only the shadow of that wondrous past remains, a shadow and a tomli. (i recce ieaped upon the stage when Fly pt was already hoary, broke

" We Shall Not Lay Down Our Arms Until 1 We Have Vindicated The Cause Which 1 Carries With It The Future of Civilisation."! THE KING s SPEECH PROROGUING PARLIAMENT.!

Persia's dominion, and laid the foundations of mocern culture and refinement of life. Alexander's armies penetrated the Orient, and proved themselves invincible against the barbarians of their own borders too. Where is that eager, buoyant Greek spirit now? Was not Byron right? The isles of Greece! the isles of Greece! Where burning Sappho loved and sung, Where grew the arts of war and peace, Where Delos rose and Phoebus sprung! Eternal Summer gilds them yet, But all, except their sun, is set. 'Tis something, in the dearth of fame, Though linked among a fetter'd race, To feel at least a patriot's shame, Even as I sing, suffuse my face;

i For what is left the poet here? F'or Greeks a blush —for Greece a tear. ! ! AVe owe to that amazing (Jreece of ; tlie comparatively brief classical age ; more ttaui we cau ever compute; but it : is d'ead. And here is a curious thing. . The blind Homer, while the Greece we ( know was yet young, sang of an older . and greater Greece, a Greece of dough- , ty heroes and matchless splendours, a , Greece of wealth and worth compared j with which the Greece of his own day , was rude and weak. ' ' We used to think this was a poet's i imagination, and that there never was I such a Greece. We were wrong. Arch- ■ aeological investigation has rediscoveri ed it. The spade and' mattock have dug ' it up, or enough of it to tell us what it must have been. Homer did not exaggerate. There it was, that Greece of dim legend and mythic story, the Greece of Agamemnon, Achilles, and Odysseus—there it really was. ■ ■ Then came Rome, mistress of the 1 world, Rome the eternal as all men at one time believed. For a few generations civilisation lay under one sceptre 1 and centred in one city. The prone: boast, j While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall ! stand; When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall; And when Rome falls —the A\ orld, seemed safe enough when it was first uttered. The Emperors were entitled "lord of the world." So potent was the spell cast upon all minds by this greatest of human institutions—Roma immorta'is —that for centuries after the empire was dead noboc.y knew it and people everywhere went on talking a?, if it were alive. ' New nations grew up insde it, and the proudest title their rulers could take was that of the old Roman Caesar. , That is all "Kaiser" means, or "Tsar" cither. Every "emperor" is hut a projeet'on of the old Roman "Impcrator ' who was only general of the armies of a Republic. This is one of the little ironies of history. Rome itself is gone for ever, the Rome whose sway stretched from Spain to India, and Scotland to the Sahara. It collapsed from within before it was overthrown from without. WHEN ROME FELL. Why then should we assume, a* w*e almost universally do, that our particular civilisation will last for ever—or, rather, as the Roman thought of t..e Coliseum, until the end of the work. ? It might very well he that we should . sink back into barbarism cither as n result of the present contest or from ' other causes. Such has happened be- , fore. . I When Roman civilisation fell the clock was put back for no less than thousand years. The time was not all •wasted. Paganism had to perish that something new and better, something richer and more stable, might gradually rise upon its ruins. But one can I quite understand the pessimism and j melancholy of the finer minds of antiquity when they saw all that was beautiful and dignified being swept under by anarchy and' savagery. I have always felt a great sympathy for Julian the apostate, the emperor who strove so vainly to resist the triumphant advance of Christianity. To

By the Rev. R. J. CAMP BELL, Late Of the City Temple (London).

liini the new cult seemed rude, vulgar, ugly, and irrational compared with the venerable and dignified symbolism of the old Greek Pantheon it was driving out. And so it was—at the time. It has the poetry and refinement of the less morally exalted faiths it destroyed. What poor Julian and others who felt like him (jid not see was that it possessed a principle of vitality and creative energy they did not. "NO STANDING STILL." Has that principle still power enough to regenerate the world? We shall see. For the old, old alternative is before us; either up Or down, there can be no standing still. It rests with ourselves to say which it shall be. I do not believe, and never could bring myself to believe, that the whole human family could fail the purpose of Almighty God, and drop down into the Trophet of sheer jungle animalism. But we are in danger of it: that is the point. It is, to say the least of it, conceivable that our present civilisation, which has been mainly materialistic in rpirit

and' aim, may go to pieces, and something entirely new have to replace it, and that might take a long, long while As it is, we have been pulled up sharply and will have to look to our foundations. Will we come out of the war chastened aud puritied or will the various belligerents bo like the famous Kilkenny tats who fought each other tu-otli and claw tiil at length there was nothing left but . . their tails? What kind of a world will it be &ft'e,r the nations have stopped killing each other and begun to live again? I ask very seriously—can it be hoped for that we may deliberately set ourselves to create a higher and better type of civilisation, 'albeit a simpler and sweeter one, than that which we are breaking up? Perhaps; it depends mainly upon whether Germany can lie compelled to learn the lesson properly. J HE ROMAN SENATORS "OPINION." Rome or Carthage, England or Prussia—which as a spiritual ideal? We have all heard of the famous Roman senator who never finished a speecli, no matter what the subject, witiio.r. adding as his filial word 1 : "1 am also of opinion that Carthage should be destroyed." It is not Germany wo want to destroy but Prussianism, Kaiserism. with its hlood-urinikng worship of the old pagan god Thor upon whom it has stuck a Christian name. And then? Well, then let us begin again and make a better thing of life than wc have been doing. That ripe and rich civilisation which immediately preceded ours and' had to die that ours might be born might look a finer thing tlian what followed it for many hundreds of years, but it was not. Its gaze was fixed on secular ideals and those only; and the civilisation that does that is doomed. A LORD MAYOR S BANQUET OF TO-DAY. Cicero was a cultivated gentleman who wrote with much complacency and eloquence concerning man's earthly lot, and very vaguely concerning the mysterious beyond'. Francis, tiie little poor man of Assisi, hundreds of years afterwards taught everybody he met to regard earthly possessions as nothing and the sou 1 as everything. If Francis were invited to the Lord Mayor's banquet to-day, and behaved as in his own day we should not know what to make of him. He would take a big pepper-box full of ashes in hi.pocket, and sprinkle it over the turtle soup and any other dish they might set before him, saying _ as he did so, " Brother ash is pure." He would not stay away from the feast, nor rebuke anyone else for eating their fill. He would enjoy theii company, and greet, all and sundry with the humble, charming, chi'd!.!; • eoutesv characteristic of him. But h • did not believe in siluttmg his appetite-: metaphorically speaking, he sprinkled ashes over everything ih-tl tlie flesh took pleasure in. And he ' d in heaven always. Hitherto the tweniteth ccnturj lias been with Cicero. God grant the rest of it may he with Francis. Cicero's world was startlingly like ours, much more so than any of the

centuries that lie between. It li.id much tho same kind of mentality and very similar problems.

Unquestionably the ordinary man ol to-dav, whether educated or not, would ieel himself more at home with tho mind of that old' world of long ago than with that of the people of the Middle Ages. Wa could converse with Ocen> much more easily than with St. Francis. We understand him better. He would be more our kind of man

I am sorry to have to admit it, but it is so. Cicero's utter secularity of outlook and uncertainty about the future life represents fairly well the average mind of to-day whereas Francs is a stranger to it. \\'e may rhapsodise about the latter but we do not get anywhere near him.

Brave, mysterious, mystical Russia would b. l much more likely to take him to her heart. Oh, I woncer—l wonder greatly—whether the world after thewar will have sense enough to shake off most of its painfully acquired secular wisdom with all its direful train of results and go as healthfully mad again as the primitive Christians and the thirteenth century friars—l wonder and 1 long. —"lllustrated Sunday Herald."