The Times. PUBLISHED ON TUESDAY AND FRIDAY AFTERNOONS. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1919. IGNORANCE AND FAILURE.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 8, Issue 447, 4 February 1919, Page 2

The Times. PUBLISHED ON TUESDAY AND FRIDAY AFTERNOONS.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1919. IGNORANCE AND FAILURE.

"We nothing extenuate, nor ut down auahi in malice."

Our Earth presents a panorama in which we find millions upon millions of square miles of oceans, lakes, and practically level lands. There are also hills by hundreds of thousands, but of the towering peaks, those which wershadow all the rest, there are in all the world but comparatively few. As it Is with the plains and mountains, even so it is with peoples : there are millions of people, but of those who by nature and personal effort are really qualified to think and lead, there also are comparatively few. " Popular Mechauics," in a weighty article on this question, says : During the past two years we have had the absorbing spectacit of the uprising of a vast nation of whom 90 per cent, are uneducated. Regardless of thcj evils which the Russian people suffered under their late Czar, it cannot be claimed that, to the present moment, they have in any way bettered their condition. So absorbed were those who rebelled in an ideal they, through ignorance, could not and did not comprehend that only through wise and just government is the largest measure of individual liberty possible, or even any liberty at all. Intoxicated with the thought of freedom, they became delirious, while the pendulum swung to the opposite extreme. From a yoke of grinding authority they went to no authority at all, for authority must be delegated to and invested in the few. Instead of majors and captains giving orders the rank and file assumed to decide for the officers ; in the navy the crews told the captains how to navigate the ships ; and shortly there was neither army nor navy, but only chaos. To these soldiers and sailors, untaught in tactics and navigation, it seemed that to command successfully all that was necessary was to give orders. In statecraft there was more evidence of judgment, where men ot higher calibre than the soldiers nnd sailors sought to guide the ship of state. But here, likewise, the effort was undertaken by those who—some really meaning wellyet lacked education in the management of affairs, and thereby came to failure. Kven Kerensky had not been in power sixty days when lie frankly admitted that many ot the decisions which as a civilian he had regarded as highly ideal and iioces>;:iy proved on trial to be both failures and utterlv impossible. And so, helped likewise by treacherous German advisers, and pulled this way and that by countless upstarts determined to attain their own personal ambition, the structure fell in ruins, rent from within and stormed from without. And ' the answer is • the small, un- ' schooled mind cannot grasp big ideas nor execute them. To the new braketnan, as he watches the experienced engineer pull the

throttle and start the train, it .seems as though he could easily run it ; "the ambitious batik clerk sees the president make loans, and thinks his own position more onerous : the medical student views a difficult operation performed so quickly and skilfully that he feels it in himself to do the same in a few more weeks or months ; but only after years of practice and experience will these same beginners realise that what they so thoughtlessly dreamed can only come through long years of patient study and exhausting effort. And so with the wellmeaning intentions of the Russian socialists ; they dreamed of great reforms, only to find that natural laws cannot be reversed and that the freedom they hoped for can be had only through wise laws justly administered ; and that in the making of laws, trained minds, and experienced, are the absolute essentials. Instead, they worked social chaos, burning homes and factories, destroying warehouses and public buildings, all to no good purpose whatever. There are oceans and plains and also hills aplenty ; but of lofty mountains that endure and command, and are worthy to be looked up to, only one is set here and there.