Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News AND UPPER THAMES ADVOCATE SATURDAY, JANUARY 22, 1898. ENGLAND FOR EVER.

Te Aroha News, Volume XIV, Issue 2070, 22 January 1898, Page 2

Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News AND UPPER THAMES ADVOCATE

SATURDAY, JANUARY 22, 1898. ENGLAND FOR EVER.

• This above all— to tfchna owo self bs toco, &«d Sti mast follow as the night the day Thou eaoafe wot than ha false to any man SHAKEaFEAKfI.

iF'the name ‘ England * to the oolonial mind is suggestive of gorgeous ceremonials ; of castles on wooded slopes with grey battlements; of pavilions draped in gold and scarlet cloths; of throngs of court beauties whose names •are familiar to every reader of fashionable intelligence, and-famous men j >stling each other on a green sward velvety through the watchful care of generations of gardeners, to those of us bred under Britannia’s grey skies, homeliw scenes are wont, at the magic name, to spring upon the boards of memory. In Punch's almanac for this year a picture appears of a foregather- > ing Of farmers in a side street of a market town discussing the crops. In a moment the mind is transported from this'eolony to the old familiar scenes. The glorious displays of England’s might in June, vanish ; true pageants of a day, and through the mists we ; :v trace the outlines of the home of a thousand tender recollections, and we ,-find ourselves turning over the quaint lumber we carry about with us in the storehouse of a memory, which learns to oherish such things more dearly every year. It is to th© England of - the old every-day life we revert in our •Softer moods. And to-day we are told • by such an authority as Joseph Chamberlain, thatthat same England is the most hated nation on earth. All Europe is arrayed against her. It is a bard saying. When we think what our country has done for liberty : how •: in every movement for the advancement of the human race her children hare ever been found in the van : what, with all our grievous mistakes, has been done for our dusky fellowsubjects in India and Africa —the mil - lions and millions upon whom w® have conferred th© blessings of freedom and thekmWtedg© of a better life. How we have 'teken over principalities and p >were, from no mere selfish desiro of aggrandisement; but for the purpose of opening them, on an equal footing, to the trade of the world. How from pome of these very markets opened at

the price of our blood and treasure this very German race which they say hates us so, has ousted ue. When we think of these things it is indeed hard to realize the existence of such a hatred as Chamberlain describes. We believe rather that while in the main the Russian and German people are well-disposed to the English, there exist parties in each of those powerful states bent on j our undoiug : which will leave no j stone unturned to ‘smash us, to use an expressive phrase. And it must be remembered that neither the German nor the Russian people have the say the English have inpublio matters. We were much struck the other day by a passage in Wishaw’s last Russian story. Describing the battle of Inkermann he says of the Russian soldier, of whom by the way Napolenu stated that while magnificent in defence he was singularly weak in aggression ; Wishaw says, in effect, that the soldier of Russia is half sheep and half philosopher. He is unlike a sheep in that he is as brave as a man need be: but like the sheep he will follow the leader whether into danger or out of it, and if one man turns and runs it is probable tfie rest will do the same; but having run away, or achieved his end, or indeed whatever may have happened, he .will not bo greatly disturbed, because he is a fatalist, and the will of Providence has more to do with victory or defeat than he has. Such a people can surely neverrise to the height of self-sacrificing enthusiasm attained by the English in what is called “a popular war.” The more we think of it, the more we are con- ‘ vinced that the battle of Inkermann shewed more clearly, perhaps, than any other ever fought by them, of what stuff British soldiers are made. Then when his ammunition ran out he clubbed his musket, when that was broken he picked up s ones and bits of wood ; many even fought the advancing Russians with their fists, cheering and laughing the while, bouncing and bluffing the foe until they were driven back, again and again. It is that wonderful capacity for facing death with a jest; “to die swearing,” as one ©f the Napier’s observed, that makes the English soldier so terrible on the battlefield. But to do Russia, Germany and France, that most gallant of nations, justice, it is not his reckless courage on the field that causes the racial hatred of which we hear so much, and whose existence, to the extent alleged, we are greatly inclined to question. What really alarms the intensely patriotic thinkers of those great nations .is the many-sidedness of the Anglo-Saxon. At once a nation of shop-keepers and warriors, and without question the colonisers and missionaries of the world. In the English' people they recognise the constituent elements : the potentialities, now on the verge of ’maturity, of the long looked for race, whose destiny, already being made manifest in TEn gland’s case, it is to control the whole world in the ages unborn. It is, we repeat, the manysidedness of the Anglo-Saxon of which the nations are jealous Ask that fine old crusted Tory whose boast it is that he never travelled in a railway carriage, and that he has never been outside England, where his sons are. One is a soldier, may be, fighting ou the Indian frontier; another a sailor ploughing the seas of the furthest Ind and, like enough, hehasa daughter among the devoted band of missionaries in China, who, however mistaken according to the ideas of some of us, are merely obeying an instinct which leads the Frenchman, the German and the Russian to shake their heads in "amazement over the doings of ‘those mad English ’ doings which only Englishmen can understand and sympathise with. The ambition of every French lad, born of respectable middle class parents, is ,to secure a Government billet—his narrow horizon contains no loftier ideal of happiness or duty. The cares, the responsibilities of that-life of independence which is so dear to an Englishman, and in search of which he will abandon a good home and carve out his fortune in the wilderness, the Frenchman, the Russian, and to a great extent the German, who prefers t > follow rather than to lead in the matter of colonization, equally seem to dread. But when it comes to the' partition of a settled country like Poland, Schleswig-Hol-stein,Egypt, and now China, the Eagles become Vultures. The three Powers, so much in evidence in the far east to-day awaiting the dissolution of the unwieldly Chinese Empire, cannot surely have thought that England was going to be content with merely looking on while such an epoch-marking event is taking place. Of one thing, however, we may be certain, such an unexpected stand as she is now making was never anticipated by the world at large. Practically England in re turn for her undertaking with respect to the Japanese war indemnity is negotiating the establishment of a protectorate over two-thirds of China, and here comes the significant part of it, rather than forego her advantage she is prepare to go to, war with any single European Power, or, what is more, any combination of European Powers What, the wondering world may well | ask, has England to support her in her present solitary attitude of defiance j nor have they long to wait for an answer, for even to us, in Te Aroha, the firm resonant reply of Britannia aroused, comes ringing over the seas —her co^nies.