One of the World's Most Remarkable Men.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 205, 1 September 1916, Page 4 (Supplement)

One of the World's Most Remarkable Men.

THE ROMANTIC STORY AND STIRRING IDEALS OF MR. HUGHES. HIS WARNINGS AGAINST THE GERMAN GRIP—HIS SUCCESS AT THE PARIS CONFERENCE. \ LESSONS OF THE NEW "PROTECTION."

By The REV. R. J. CAMPBELL, in "Illustrated Sunday Herald."

MR. HUGHES'GOSPEL. Our own bitter experiences havo made us realise Mow vital to national safety and welfare the raw materials of our basic industries are. I believe that through the resolutions of the Paris Conference we can strike a blow at the heart of Germany. The only opposition we need fear to the coming change is that whose roots are embedded in Gorman gold. —.Mr. Hughes at the Mansion House on June 21. MR. HUGHES' MOTTO. "National welfare and national safety" is the motto we have blazoned on our banners. We must control industry; otherwise we cannot organise it. We must pay a fair and reasonable wage to enable a man to marry and rear a family in a state of comfort, compatible with a high standard of civilisation. Recently I went io take duty in the country, not far from where 1 live, and bad tea in an old garden. It had been a fine garden in its time, but its day of glory was past. It was not properly locked after, nor perhaps is like to be again. But what 1 noticed particularly was the fate of what had been a splendid oak tree. It was dead or nearly so. and yet at a distance produced the illusion of. being still alive. Its foliage appeared luxuriant, until one looked more closely and discovered that it did not belong to the oak at all, but to what had killed it. The poor old t-.ee had been choked to death by the most prolific crop of ivy growth 1 have ever seen. It was a most curious spectacle. There stood the semblance of a tree, a gigantic tree, with trunk and branches intact, but gripped and covered in every part by the climbing tendrils of the flourishing parasite that had sucked the life out of it. Slowly, inch by inch, the deadly work had been done unchecked, and now the ruin was complete. It was the ivy that lived, not the oak. Somehow this made me think of a book I had just been reading It was Douglas Sladen's little sketch of the career of W. M. Hughes, Prime Minister of Australia. It is not a first-rate book as biographies go. Possibly it was not intended to be. But it has at least this merit —thai it presents in a small compass the romantic story and inspiring ideals of one o" the most remarkable men In the world to-day—clear-sighted, patriotic, indomitable, as much an Imperial statesman as an Australian, and perhaps the leader who will show us the way out of a good many of outdifficulties and mistakes. And what I saw of the great oak tree in the baleful embrace of the ivy seemed to point the moral of much that this man has been telling us lately. SUCKING OUT OCR VITALITY. England is the cak tree —or may be if we don't take rate. Before the war it was slowly but surely having the vitality sucked out of it by German Industrial and commercial methods. Has this little Welshman come to warn us in time and petsuade us to do more than tear down the ivy, to pluck it up by the roots and prevent it from getting a "hold again? 1 rather think so. We are a Blow-going folk, but if we can once be made to see a thing we generally know hew to keep going till we havo realised our object. Whether Mr. Hughes can succeed In making us see what Is amiss in this instance remains to lie proved. That he is in process of doing so is o.bvicus from the results of the Paris Fiscal Conference of the Allied Rations. We are at last awake to a great danger, and to the necessity of taking vigorous measures for dealin-; with it. Mr. Hughes asks if we know that (here is scarcely a single manufacturing or trading interest in this conn try that is not more or less under Herman nfluence. It is very uncomfortable to on made to realise that German organisation, controlled ami directed by the German Government Itself bad penetrated every [tart of tbe British Empire in common with all the most fruitful districts of the earth, ana established a dominating interest J.i many trades and manufactures of the most vital importance to us as a nation —very uncomfortable ami alarming indeed It is unjust to curse Germany for it' as so many peo'ih; are doing, and to enlarge on the sinister meats by which she furtbcr?d her aims. Why were we not alive to it? Why had w not an energy an.l enterprise equal to hers? We used to have; and if we bar'! lost it, it is our own fault. There !• no more sensf in blaming Gerinar.y for the skill and cleverness she has r'lrplaycd in gett'ng her hands up m the world's productive outlets than in blaming our forefathers for exact I \ the same thing. We were first •'. the field, and she was determined to oust, us—tbal is ali. Where blameworthiness comes In, on one side cr the other, is where robbery comes in and not otherwise. If any country or any set of men '•<■ pi.MH:';\-; to exploit or oppress an" (••flier country or nuv other ret of i- ■••"• ihey aro verily guilty I rfoic ■MM. F!ik-!i was Boltfi"in in the Congo. Such has Germany been wherever she has ret her iron heel. ! : uc]i i.-i capitalism in runny of its pause:; r.t hon-e and abroad. PACTS TO THINK ADOPT P"t hero arc some fa'ls to thin'-: about. According to Mr. H:rM:os. German'.' has been epiiotly getting possession for years andyears past of the econ.v

Mr. Hughes clear-sighted, patriotic, indomitable, as ! much an Imperial statesman as an Australian, is perhaps I the leader who will show us j the way out of a good many of our mistakes. mic means of holding the nations in thrall, and draining their life-blood into her own veins. He says her rtatesmen made it a deliberate policy, and hope to continue to enforce iit after the war. He maintains that. ' they are preparing for it now, with- ' out hasting, without resting, and with I a clear vision of what they mean to i do. He insists that the war will be only | half won unless we guard against | this, and wholly lost if we let them J do it, whichever way military and ! naval efforts go. We may spill blood i to no purpose if the German agent '■ and the Germon politico-commercial ! traveller are permitted to go on do- ' lug after the war what they were donig before the war. Ho tells us what a struggle we had ! ::i getting rid of the German control of the Australian metal industry alone, and what a grip he found it had got. He asks if we know that in Great Britain that grip is still tighter, and that there is scarcely a single manufacturing or trading interest in this country that is not more or less under German influence. Once free from it through the hurricane of war, and the bloody sacrifices we have had to make, we should should be mad to subniti to it again. PROSPERITY MADE US SLEEPY. Why did we ever submit to iUat all? There is only one answer, and that is that our prosperity made us sleepy and lethargic in our ways We failed to see that individual initiative was not enough, and even that began to flag as time went on. The stubborn British producer would not alter his methods for anybody, nor condescend to adapt himself to the needs of outsiders. These must have the goods he chose to oend them or none. The German was not slow to take advantage of the fact, and shouldered us out of one market after another. He is to be praised for his vigour and ability, vigour and ability which were once ours in as high a dgree, and must be again, i Moreover, the German Government took the le.u! ii all this. It di&t-.vered the value ,if co-ji-iinatins \\\* national resources. Every t-ir-nv.a Embassy and Conui'. «to :hrou;.ho:it :i-e world hu-j ior a goacr-ition o:' rare been a trade pusher Ours do not conde-stcnl lo le such, and we lose or. aocordm°'ij Cer'.ian trade exports aro in < .cry land, studying conditions, negotiating ( contracts, and sending elaborate re- ' ports home to be efficiently dealt with by an administratian which has learni ed to ignore no part of the nation's . interest. 1 NO WAITING. This is one cf the first lessons we I have got to learn—now immediately, net. waiting till the war is over, j Government in the future in the ' British Islands as elsewhere must be more than a matter of keeping order while capital and labour wrangle and dispute at their pleasure. It must be a business directorship. It must concern itoclf intimately with everything that bears upon national wellbeing. i And that means beginning with the child, seeing that he is properly housed fed and educated, and then going on to ensure that national mdustries are built a;.c! organised which can maintain him, and usefully employ his energies in after life. In other words we want the Socialised State, call it what you will. The doctrine of laisser faire Is done for, whatever elfe may be. The policy or drift and muddle must be swept away and replaced by that of thorough and well-considered organisation of all cur reserves of power. Heaven save us from a gospel of efficiency that looks to material ends alone. But my own earnest belief is that the more willing we are as a people to submit to discipline for the common good the more likely we shall be to find our sou's.

TWO TALKS WITH MR. CHAMBERLAIN. 1 Years ago when .Mr. Chamberlain was talking to us as Mr. Hughes is doing now, about an organised development of the resources of (he Empire as a whole, he was strenuously opposed by the supporters of Free Trade and the representatvics of organised labour, and not without rearon. His diagnosis of the case with regard to German r doitation cf our markets was correct, though 1 do not thnik the remedies be proposed were wholly satisfactory. He was right in insisting, as now we all see, that the cheapness of a commodity is not the first thing to be thought about, but what wc have to buy it with. Consider the procurer first, and the consumer Is cure to be ail right. Foster the actual creation of wealth, nor by the amassing of money ill a few bands, but by the development of industries, and you are in a far better position than by merely keeping prices down by competition. But. warned by flic exainp'o ol America, wise men saw that Mr. Chamberlain's proposals taken by themselves were not enough. They might play into the hands of huge trust.", am! financial corporation- and b ave the owrkmi'.n r.- badly off a? nolo: e. In two inlr-iviews with, him I \>:i t-j got him to say how this wm io b" met. but lie could not or wo-.id r.oi fell me.:'.>. though I war enlirc'y w'th hi in as to the danger we wore m of becoming only ■'■■' ('"chnirriiig inp!eatl of a producin-; count!y, i f<Mi, Ti: ;i;om;:n<; > more', that I r'o-b.l no' r'',:.ii his'i eriif Koforni pivpo.-ahj. Mi;. iHT-f.'Efi AND lIIS GOSPEL, j l.i the mouth of Mr. Hughes it is a I very different proposition. Here is

a man who has known what it is to. be hungry, who has fought his way up from the lowest rung of the economic ladder, and who is to-day not only the Prime Minister of a great Commonwealth but a trusted and authoritative exponent of the principles of organised labour. When he speaks about the "New Protection' we are compelled to listen. Protection against the German vampire in this sense does not mean "The British jteople like a

man who is a man, and who has a mind and can speak it. Mr Hughes has not flattered them but this is no time for {latteries; he has not minced words, but this is no time for platitudes. "He is a jiatriot. He wants to win the war, and he is not cue of those who desire to drive the Germans out of Belgium but to leave them in the British Empire. And his earnestness, his courage, his patriotism, and his ideals have all found their expression in those speeches—frank, iicry, friendly, scornful, eloquent—which have come, i: we may use a once familiar simile, like rare refreshing fruit to tho parched lips of the multitude." —A critic yesterday, the enrichment of a few capitalists but the building up of general prosperity on the broadest basis of mutual co-operation. Let us hope and pray that it may succeed, if only to get rid of the suicidal policy of slowing down all production to the pace of the lesat efficient workman while forcing up wages to a point at which we cannot hold our own against the foreigner. These are only a layman's thoughts on a subject In which the economic expert is expected to pronounce an authoritative opinion. But we cannot very well wait for the various economic experts to settle all their differences in regard to it. As it Is we have waited too long. THE LESSON TO THE NATION'S. We want no fiscal boycott of Germany after the war beyond what 13 necessary to secure our owik markets The best thing that could happen would be the destruction of nil tariff walls everywhere. But as we cannct get that we must do the next best thing. Seme day we shall have to live with our enemies again in peace, and, we may trust, with a better understanding ill round. They must cease to prey upon us or wish to do so. And then we can both afford to let our barriers down. When, oh, when, will the nations learn that it is to the best interest of all to encourage to the fullest the development of the resources of each Derby used to have a tariff against Nottingham, and Nottingham a rampart to defend itself against possible invasion from Derby. They know better than that now, and have grown and prospered accordingly. R. J. CAMPBELL.