CORRESPONDENCE.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 4406, 4 May 1909, Page 3

CORRESPONDENCE.

(We are not responsible for the opinions expressed by our correspondents.)

(To the Editor.) Sir, —Amongst a series of sermons preached in London fifty or more years ago, by an exceedingly popular and remarkably elevated Diviue of the Established Church, was one headed “Th 9 Motive, the Li3t of an Action.” I propose in this letter to analyse the meaning of the word patriotism in connection with the Dreadnought offer. A few years back, after the close. of the Boer war, a certain person in his position in the House and presumably one of the Colony’s spokesmen, while the generous settlement of the Mother Country was being commented on, gave impression to the idea that fighting for the equity of the Empire was one of the best paying things out, for it could be seen fri m figures, of which he is almost insanely fond, that for every £1 New Zealand had contributed towards the expenses it had received b ;ck, either in direct cash or indirect benefits, some £4 or £5. By so saying destroying at one fell stroke the work our people had taken in the glorious consummation of events. So having snubbed the country by placing its fighting men in the position of mercenaries and reducing patriotism to £. s. d.—a mere case of throwing a sprat to catch a maekeral he all at once jumps up and makes a wonderful offer for which the country will have to pay, and desires to pose as the greatest, if not the only patri it in New Zealand by so doing. This patriotism is a sham and as to the kind of mackerel he expects to get back this time for his sprat of a battleship is more than I can either conceive or conjecture. —I am, etc., H. J. Hawkins.