The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1918 WAR REMINISCENCES.

Taihape Daily Times, 12 November 1918, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1918 WAR REMINISCENCES.

(With which is Incorporated The Taihape Post and Walmaxl'io News).

President Wilson lias been deputed the medium whereby peace is to be declared to the world, and the advice is broadcasted that no other person or source should be taken any notice of. The time .allowed for the delegation’s final reply to the terms imposed by Foch expired last nighty and wo cannot ■conceive that any delay in transmitting the momentous news will be made by President Wilson. Thcn } today will furnish one of the most memorable events in the history of the world; it would become to the world what the fourth of July is to the United States. As Independence Day keeps green in the American memory the defeat of tyranny, and the establishment of the right to self-govern-ment, so to-day the peoples of the world have been freed from an infinitely incomparably greater tyranny, and every small or large nation has had the inalienable right to guide their own respective destinies won for them. For hundreds of years into the future there will will bo a greater Independence Day annually recurring to keep green the memory of the eolossally satahie bloodlust and powerlust that to-day is finally and completely crushed. The plotters and tricksters in the appalling schemes w'hich involved the deaths of millions of human beings, the maiming of as many more by acts of almost inconceivable butchery, while as many more succumbed from starvation and disease caused thereby, have } in spite of the bloody cruelty of their natures proved themselves to be the most detestable of cowards. When defeat faced them they slunk aw r ay; not one of them stood up to the finish. When there were 'no more lives of the people to sacrifice, they took their miserable bodies into hiding, not the courage of a mere animal even, no semblance of conviction that they had engaged in a defensible act; they are slinking away as rats leave a sinking ship or a collapsing building; they dare not continue to live with the people who had hailed them as kings and leaders; they had exploited every demoniacal and cruel device involving the lives and homes of the millions over whom they rulcd ; and they prove their treachery to God and man by running from the court of public opinion, before -which they would be proud to stand were they not confessed traitors of the very deepest and most dispieable dye. The German, Austrian, Bulgarian and Turkish peoples now have reason to study the characters of their respective who, when defeat faced them slunk away from the retribution that should have followed upon their misdeeds as day follows the night. The people who fought and suffered have to pay the cost of their traitorous king’s folly ; the king is not man enough to remain and share with the people the result of his own power lust and treachery. What a colossal dehumanising spec-

tale those apostles of the divine right of kings have built up; is there a man living apart from those miserable skunking villiuns who has not had the lesson impressed upon him that divine right is a damnable thesis, henceforth and for ever to carry with it the brand of lying, treachery and oppression? Is not every thinking .person, who is not consumed with greed, convinced by experience of the last' four years that the people only are : to be trusted, and that the more uniformly and evenly political power is distributed the greater will be the sum of general happiness and contentment ? Is ft not appalling to contemplate the quite unnecessary and criminal waste of thousands of millions, aye, hundreds of thousands of millions j of money, in ships of war ? in munitions that end in more smoke, in the training and equpiment of armies and navies; in the various secret services, which are nothing, more nor than hugely costly schemes of lying, deceit

and spying, than which nothing can be more demoralising > while men, women and children work and starve to find the money? Taxation and. still more taxation is to be the cry in New as well as elsewhere in the world, and what is the ever increasing taxation needed for? Is it not to pay the costs of fighting against the claims made by' questionably moral natured men to rule by divine right? Destroy all trace of the inherent right to rule in every man in thiT world and ships of war will give place to ships of commerce; armies of soldiers will be transformed into armies of producers; munitions that end in smoke will turn into that which fills the granaries of the world; the anguish, pain and death plentifully produced by war will vanish and home dife; and happiness will replace them-; substitute the. lying and treachery of the innately wicked divine lighters with the will and intelligence of the and taxation will become nominal. While wo in New Zealand rejoice over the retribution that has fallen upon the world’s enemies, the lessons this groat war has boon prolific of must not be allowed to got out of view, or they will be lost to civilisation. While we are paying the heavily pressing, almost unbearable taxation that is made inevitable by the scheming and greed •of a coterie of German militarists who have hypnotised their people with their divine right doctrine, let us fully realise and convince- ourselves about the and greed of men in our who are only less dangerous than those the Allies have to-day finally and irreversibly conquered. We may trust the people not to w’aste our production and the lives of our people in building up military machines; let no man or body of men arrogate to themselves the right to rule, and then the future of the w’orld wdll never be stained w f ith the blood of millions, nor will there be need for oppressive taxation to pay the bill of costs usurpers of power run up. Militarism is virtually wiped out to-day; we start with a clean slate from this date, let no self-seeking man or body of men ever again have the power to murder the people of the wmrld, to destroy its civilisation and to leave those still .1 > ■(>... „■ - alive almost overwhelmed with taxation. The barometer of success; of home life, comfort,' happiness, contentment liberty and all that is humanly and divinely sacred, is taxation. Watch the fluctuations .of the taxation barometer, taking full cognisance of the indirect as well as the direct, and you at the same time watch the fluctuations in the general freedom, liberty, progress, happincss ? contentment and general welfare of the whole body politic'.' ' Just at present the taxation baropicter has been burst by Germany’s unspeakable crime, but it should be replaced and diligently observed at the earliest possible moment.