Rangitikei Advocate. TWO EDITIONS DAILY. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 16, 1916. THE CAUSE OF THE WAR.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XLI, Issue 11647, 16 August 1916, Page 4

Rangitikei Advocate. TWO EDITIONS DAILY. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 16, 1916. THE CAUSE OF THE WAR.

THE great war has supplied a creative stimulus in many directions, but none more so than in the literature of which it has been the prime cause—descriptive, commentary and prophetic—about itself. As to its actual cause there have been many guesses. In seeking for these we are apt to have our attention drawn to what might be called the concrete and obvious. It is usual to see tbe genesis of tbe vast world conflict in the murder of the Crown Prince of Austria, at Sarajevo. But according to one writer it was only there that incentives and intentions emerged into the open and became concrete where "previpusly they had only been psychological and scarcely articulate The cause of the war had its roots deep in racial differences between Slav and Teuton which, in.spite of temporary alliances and agreements, grim and malevolent under all smiles and manifestations of Iriendliness, were ready to break into hostilities at the first provocation. The war, therefore, was simply as inevitable as fate. While the Germans, by commercial and Court penetration of Russia were able to contemptuously direct its policy there was no likelihood of war between the two. But when Russia a few years ago, partially shoot itself free of its blood-suckers, threw in its fortunes with France, and put forward its pretensions to the wardship of the Slavs, wherever they might be, a conflict became us certain, as anything under Heaven can he. For Germany began to industrially prepare for it as one of the prime objects of its world policy.

There were, of coarse, other deciding factors in the German intention. The crushing of the Slav hegemony was to be only a prelude to more ambitions projects. The defeat of Russia and Franco would have made Germany more fully dominant in Europe than France under Napoleon, and although the latter was never able to deliver the stroke at England that he would have given years of his life to have delivered, a triumphant Germany, with the revolutionary changes which have occurred in travel and transport, could probably have been able to administer a fiuishingstroke to Britain.. Then what we designate the old world would have been at the feet of the junkers. We should probably be of less account after our suppression than the Turks until some change in the balance of power, such as history has imposed with inflexible discrimination in the ages past, had rid us of German domination. From the German standpoint, and in consonance with their immoral international doctrine that might is the only right, the prospect of being able to trample upon the necks of their|onemies—to have the whole world in humility at their feet—to impose tributes and maintain a sway over the whole of the old world, like Rome in its palmy days, must have been alluring and tascinating to the junkers beyond the conception of civilised and hu mane beings who regard war as the crowning iniquity of human wickedness.

But there is poetic, as. well as mbre imperious, justice in the position in which the Gormans find themselves to day. They have earned the hatred of the world without having subjected it. If the war .were to end to-morrow their situation would be the most uncomfortable one that ever a nation occupied. They would be ringed in by a congeries of nations, nearly all of which have been given much cause for hostility by the revelation of utlimate German ambitions in regard to them, as well as the highhandedness with which they have played the role of conqueror before they have conquered. Holland is rapid'y becoming hostile; Denmark has old scores, to settle if the opportunity offers; Norway has no love for German; Sweden is probably the only small nation in the ring favourable to them, and the great and abiding menace of the Colossus of the North,

Francs, Britain and Italy make up a hostile entourage capable of rendering nervous a nation far less given to .nerves than the Germans. With Genniiuy beaten, however, to the extent to which the A liles intend to carry the castigation . she will not have a friend in the world. The situation will srftiice fora lesson for all time that, although almost up to a thousand or two years ago, a conqueror might rage over a disorganised world, the conditions which now exist will forever place an em : bargo on its repetition.

THE last day for the privilege of

investing in war Make Haste, Bonds is now ap-

preaching. Why the Finance Minister has set so early a limit to the period allowed for applications we do not know unless it is that he believes all those who are sufficiently patriotic to invest will not need months to make up their minds. We may be quite sure that; the enemy is as closely watching these financial indications of loyalty and of determination to win the war as he is of the more purely military. A failure, or even a partial failure, of the loan would give the enemy cause for self-con-gratulation as indicating that at least one Dominion was tiring of the war.