The Daily News. SATURDAY, MAY 6, 1911. THE EARTH UNITED.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 294, 6 May 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. SATURDAY, MAY 6, 1911. THE EARTH UNITED.

It may have occurred to the examiner of events, as it certainly has done to the thinkers and writers, that we appear to be losing the uncompromising determination—brutality, if you will —of our ancestors. In the days when men. were hanged for horsestealing and deported for less, sentimentality and the railway train did not exist. Britons were" uncompromisingly hostile to many foreign-, ers. The Frenchman was not hated.so much because he was an enemy, but because he was a Frenchman. It would have been impossible for our greatgrandfathers to have fallen on the neck of our hereditary enemy Jean, and havesaluted his cheek in amity. Those were the days before the ingenious statistician proved that the. Empire was about to decay by quoting figures, and when our piratical forefathers, always with the most lioly intentions, declared instant war when a unit of the hereditary enemy, showed up. Britons may not have been less mild than now, but they appear to have been more ferocious. The olive branch was not waved to the same delirious extent. The international.method was to "get yer blow in fust"—as a student of tactics has since remarked. In our apparent belief that we have lost the national backbone, and the new idea that a perpendicular attitude is unkind, we prove that a problematical enemy is the finest chap who ever waved a weapon. We have discovered the virtues of the Frenchman, even forgetting that we used to think him a monster of iniquity; but we save our intensest admiration for our relatives, the Germans, proving smugly that the)' are so very much superior to us in every possible way that the fate of our navy is already settled. We gaze with admiration on the virtues, the strength and the progress of other peoples, meekly hoping with upturned eyes and clasped hands that they will be good enough not to hurt us, the lowly folk, who for our meekness have inherited the earth, or as much of it as we can comfortably hold. We are kinder to each other, too. The "rod is spared," because its application in old days made our ancestors the sort of people they were—the swashbucklers! They were very naughty to riot in physical conquest when they might have been so much more gentlemanly and tame. Nelson might have used a scented note instead of his Victory, and Wellington might easily have asked the little Corsican to kindly excuse him. Someone has accused the race of loss of virility. Maybe it is emasculated, maybe not. One is unable to judge the strength of the individual until he is "up against it." Tn the meantime, having nothing to flesh bayonets on, and very little to kill, we indulge kindly consideration for nations we hope we shan't have to smite. Wo have given over saying, "We don't want to fight, but by jingo if we do," etc. And

talking about "ships and money, too," an. English contemporary prints the fact that in the year 1811 the seventeen million folk of Britain spent £20,500,000 on tlie fleet, and that this year 45 million folk will spend only £1 per head. The essential difference between the national feeling of 1811, and 1911 is that, if there was a bare excuse to use a fighting force in the first-named year, it would have been seized. Those were the days antecedent to these kid glove and scented missive times. The contention ! that the Briton of to-day has lost his racial characteristics, and that the race has "gone to pot" in one hundred years, deceives no one. Repetition of the conditions of a century ago would produce the elements' necessary to meet them. International hypocrisy is the chief rea-1 son for the exchange of compliments, but exchanges of courtesy and compliment have up to now not made for inI ternational fraternity. None of the nations are really "softer," although they affect to be; hut perhaps if fine words are bandied for a little longer the ideal .of the great Victor Hiigo may be reached. Shortly before he died he wrote: "The party to which I belong does not yet exist. It is the party of revolution for civilisation. This party will form the twentieth century. Prom its teaching will rise first the United States of Europe, then the United States of the World." Man is groping in the dark, using smooth-tongued words, preaching peace, and preparing for war. Perhaps through the dark he sees brighter prospects than he did a century ago for the unity Hugo prophesied. One can only hope that the British habit of belittling Britons and praising problematical enemies is an earnest of the time when the lion shall lie down with the lamb on the international scrap-heap, i from which the white flag of the United j States of the World flutters over a new humanity.