REMARKABLE PROPHECY

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 388, 13 May 1910, Page 2

REMARKABLE PROPHECY

IS EUROPE ON THE VERGE OF WAR? (By Max Nordau}. Europe will not be able very much longer to escape a great and violent rending asunder of its nationalities. The different isolated portions and peoples will either once more join their most unrepresentative races to call in their assistance and with their support overcome the smaller people in the midst of which they happen to be and whose compulsion they now endure. The little peoples 'who share a country with others and are unable to fall iback upon any powerful relations are doomed to destruction. They cannot maintain their position in the struggle for existence against their stronger countrymen. As people thev must perish.

Only the great nations will endure and such of the smaller ones as will be in a position to found an independent, national, political constitution, if necessary, by expelling or suppressing the foreign popular elements that are settled among them. The curtain has been raised; the catastrophe is approaching. It will be cruei and hard, but hard and cruel are the destinies of all living beings, and existence is a struggle in which there is no mercy shown.

What we have to ck> with here is not a question of right, but a question of might in the highest and most Jiuman sense of the term.

There is no right which can oblige a living being to waive necessary conditions of existence. That is only to be accomplished by compulsion, and compulsion engenders opposition. No fanatic in regard to what is right has ever yet demanded of the lion that it should begin a suit for expropriation whenever it wanted to eat a sheep. Of course it would also be right for the sheep to kill the lion if it were able. When we are dealing with a matter of life or balance of power, the notion or right and upright coincide. This is so evident that even the written laws of a country reserves defence of his life for the individual as a matter of right, and therefore coincides that there are situations in 'which a man has to seek for his right in 'his strength. And in what respect, then, is war anything else than a similar case of selfdefence, though not of an individual but of a people? A people recognises or imagines that it recognises that there is something necessary for its life, and it stretches out its hands for it. It has a right to do so, the same right as the lion to the sheep. Should another people try 1o .prevent it from obtaining this necessary thing, then it has to intervene, in defence of its right, with its might. A race of people whose .language is being tried to be taken from them is, as it were, in the position of having to defend its life. It has the right to contend for its most precious pieces of property. If, however, it should not be strong- enough to defend it, it has no cause for complaint. In the same way, a ruling people possesses the right to see that its freedom of speech should not be diminished by the presence of another race of people in the same country, and to refuse to make any kind of concessions to the latter which would limit its comfort.

If, however, it is unable to follow up its right, it must resign itself to recognise the other race of people as equally entitled, it must meekly descend from its higher point of view as a dominant people; nay, it must be a condition of its existence.

The twentieth century can hardly grow: much older without seeing the conclusion of this drama in the world's history. Befor|> long a considerable part of Europe will see much distress and bloodshed, many acts of violence and crime; peoples will be ranged against peoples and races pitilessly crushed. Side by side with tragedies of human business will be played tragedies of lofty heroism, hordes of cowards will allow themselves to be emasculated without resistance, and brave armies will perish gloriously in fight. The survivors, however, will then enjoy full possession of their national i-'iits. and in words and actions will ::hvays .i.nd everywhere be able to be themselves.

The prospect that is here disclosed to us is ;'. gloomy one, l>ut it cannot terrify tlin man who has become reconciled to the severity of the universal law of life. Life means struggling, and the power to live. This law dominates the sun in space equally with the infusoria in stagnant water. It dominates peoples also, and gives to their destinies on this earth that direction from which they cannot he' diverted by any hypocritical legislation or any trick policy, any interests on the part of mercenary renegades. Sentimentality may wipe its eves at the sight of the destruction of a people, but the intelligent man knows it went down because it did not have the power to endure.