The Daily News. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1911. NATION WORSHIP.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 133, 27 November 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1911. NATION WORSHIP.

Ic was the universal fashion in all Brit:sli ami many other countries when the Japs rose out of their romantic an<l picturesque past and donned the trousers and ideas of Westerners to regard them as capable of beating the world at anything they undertook. A threatening nation is always both admired and feared, and at present Germany, because it is flourishing the iron mitten and talking bare steel, is obtaining more admiration tlian is good for her. A nation's piogress is coincident with its advance in intellect, and the use it makes of its powoers of organisation. The best example extant of a nation that has grown by the exercise of originality is the United States of America. She has set herself to be as unlike every other country as possible; and no country on earth except the United States lias an Edison or any single man like him. When Edison is oracular , the world listens to liini, and the oracle has spoken about Germany—terrible, overwhelming, supreme Germany. Mr. Edison las s-aid tiino'jg other things that the German feeds his brain with beer and that Germany has "beer architecture,'' that Germans lack initiative, but aire good imitators, that they are not keen on new ideas, and that the business integrity of our cousins is "away down," the eminent inventor saying that British integrity is the finest thing of its kind above ground. Mr. Edison is of opinion that the ''commercial world dominance" of Germany is impossible of realisation merely because of the failings lie mentioned. As it is in commercial and armed rivalry with Britain that the German is most feared, Mr. Edison's remarks are of greater interest to Britishers than to others, and if Mr. Edison or anybody else is able to make Britishers feel less like ''ten cents" about their own strength and qualifications he i j doing good Imperial work, even though he is a citizen of the United Slates. Come to think of it, it is men like Edison—great thinkers and inventors—who

supply the motive power for nations. They revolutionise the arts of peace and the arts of war, and they have in their own hands and brains the making or marring of nations. The inventor is more potent that the statesman or the sailor or the soldier, because without him all would be harmless ciphers. A nations (as the Japs) may adopt ideas, or (like the Germans) stick rigidly to preconceived plans, but the nation that is permanently great is the nation whose powers of origination are the largest. The victors in the world clash of the future will not be the imitators, but the originators.