WAR AND CHARACTER.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 225, 10 November 1916, Page 3 (Supplement)

WAR AND CHARACTER.

By FELIX CLAIRE

Certain German writers have emphasised their belief that war should not be regarded as an evil, but rather as a national necessity. Thev contend that it is necessary, in order to develoo the true qualities of manliness, heroism, self-reliance, and the spirit of selfsacrifice. Without it, they say, the race woudl deteriorate, and men would grow feeble and .effimin.ite, and the nation would tend to self-indulgence, and hence to decay. Whilst granting a substratum f truth in this plea, it is not difficult to show its fallacy. "Peace hath its victories,'' and any close student of human nature wili find abundr.nt examples of real heroism and .self-sacrifice in the everyday life of the people in times of peace. But it is remarkably true on the other hand, that war is a great "revealer "cf characteristics, till then, perhaps, unsuspected. Never has this been more clearly shown than in the present great war. It is natural this should be so, for such a violent upheaval stirs to its very depths the deep waters of national life, and brings to the surface much that would otherwise be hidden.

Who among us, two years ago, would have conceived the conduit and conditions of the people of England today even as a remote possibility? Those men at their desks in the offices —wc Knew them as steady plodders, incapable of violent exertion under conditions of unspeakable discomfort and hardship. Those burly labourers—we recognised their usefulness as such, but never credited them with souls above their narrow environment. Those sturdy mechanics —we praised their skill, and held that no other natiou would excel them in .workmanship according to their craft, hut who dreamed of them as made cf the stuff that builds heroes of undying fame! OLD APPEARANCES ONLY A VENEER. To-day under the stirring impulse of tho world-strife, we know that the old appearances were only a thin veneer, hiding but not destroying the true manliness oi their characters. To-day, those very men have shown themselves the match for the most highly-trained warriors of the War Lord whose armies had been loudly acclaimed as the finest the world had ever seen. Kitchener's Army—Tom Smith. Bill Jones, Harry Richardson, meek tailors, simple farm-hands, sptc-and-span clerks, or scented dandies ol the leisured classes —these men have met and vanquished on the field of deadliest battle the world-famous Prussian Guard! Brighter laurels than Homer's await the bard who can adequately sing that story! Yet it is not only as a tevealer of merit that war stands. There are other traits in national and individual character which may remain long unsuspected, until some great ctisw thrusts them forward. Before the war we all knew the Germans, or thought we did. We enmo across them in business, and probably had our omnions about them in general.

Many of us did not like them, for their ways were not our ways, but being a tolerant people we kept our objections to ourselves, and were content to let them live their lives as they wished. We knew them to be callous and unscrupulous; we mentally condemned them for their treatment of their women-folk: we half pitied them for their subservience to the military and to their autocratic Kaiser; and we smiled indulgently when they sought and found greater freedom under our auspices than in their own land. But with alf that we looked upon them as a remarkably clever nation, ■incl regarded them as highly civilised. We felt indebted to them in the matters of music, of medicine, of various sciences, and, perhaps, of philosophv. There had been great minds in Germanv, and we readily paid homage w) their greatness, and respected the race which had produced them. THE REVELATION. Then came the war .and with it i revelation that has almost stunned us. It took weeks before the English nation could realise the unspeakable barbarities perpetrated by the ; kultured" Germans in Belgium and France. _ In past wars we' had fought against avowed savages, and had done so expecting nothing but barbarism from them. Wc had been at war with civilised nations and had observed the rules of civilised warfare, knowing that they would do the same': we had respected them as brave and chivalrous foes, and had treated them when vanquished as brave men deserve to be treated. But now, for the first time .we found ourselves r.posed to men who had worn the thin veneer of civilisation, but whom we now found to be more inhuman than savages, while combining ilio cunning and potential devilry ot high cientihe attainment! Without the war we should never have suspected the depths oi treachery and brutality which underlie the German character. We should have continued to take their "kulture at its face value. But the war has again revealed what was bidden, and in all its lijdeousncss the German ic ha rainier stands liefo.ro the world for what it is. But in e.eii case the character was •1 ready there, and was not created, but onlv revealed bv the war. And prob ablv in each case it was already plainly in evidence, in other .ways, had we but known how to look for it. Peace hath l-cr victoric—and her dishonours.