FUTURE OF BRITAIN.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 301, 16 December 1908, Page 4

FUTURE OF BRITAIN.

SIK THEODUKEsMAItm ON THE -\K\V AUE. " J give this as my message to my countrymen : Your destiny is assured through toil and tribulation. Thougn for a time tricksters and pigmies may impede, your march is onward to the consummation of your great Imperial dcslinv.''

la thee words Sir Theodore Martin, die veteran poet and litterateur, wlio recently celebrated his ninety-sixth birthday, sums up the future of th-j British Empire. Sir Theodore is one of the distinguished personalities of the Victorian era. He was a close personal friend of the hue fjueen Victoria, and at her command wrote the "Life of the Prince Consort." Early in the present year he published an interesting volume of recollections of her Majesty. " Voti ask me,'' he said in an interview with a representative of the Daily Mail, " what 1 think of the outlook from the present to the future. L;t me tell my day and generation it is a sad and saddening spectacle. For years 1 have studied this great problem of unemployment, but Parliament will never solve it by presi-.it methods. " Why 1 Because you are iucalculating in the working man principles of dependence, and the whole trend of your legislation is to discount the value of honest work. Yes, J have followed your Victor (ir'aysons, your Keir Hardies, your John Burnscs. But what is the logical outcome of all their preachings and prophesying* y Surely that this grand old Britain of ours must decline —that is, if the demagogue has his way.

" But he will not have his way. At the core the great heart of the nation is sound, and things will right themselves with time. We may yet see the glitter of the bayonet in Picadilly. We have heard that civilisation is based on bayonets, and if demagogues have their way, peace may only be restored in London as in Warsaw. These firebrands are goading the people on to deeds or' unthinkable barbarism, and bow near the debacle may be in our loved country. Cod only knows. '• We of the old order see much to deplore in the new. The stately manners of spacious Victorian days are gone. Men with brass mouths and iro-i lungs command undivided attention today. Haste, bustle, noise, the jingling of the guinea, the thousand and "ue meretricious allurements of the age have for a time dimmed the fair mirror of British life but it will pass.''