The Daily News. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1914. THE CAUSE OF THE CONFLICT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 99, 22 September 1914, Page 4

The Daily News. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1914. THE CAUSE OF THE CONFLICT.

Dr. l'itehett, the gifted author of "Deeds that won the Empire," and other highly interesting books on the doings of Britains, says in this month's "Life" the magazine of which he is editor, that 1 when the historian of the next generu- ' tion has to describo the cause of the present gigantic conflict, lie will certainly reject most of the explanations already offered. One of Macauley's frequently quoted sentences is that in which he describes the results of the invasion of Silesia by Frederick tile Great. ''ln order," he says, "that he might rob a neighbor whom he had promised to defend, black men fought 011 the coast of Coramandel, and red men scalped cacli other by the lakes of North 1 America." Like many other epigrams, that needs to be inverted in order io ' become correct. Ia the Seven Years' j War, great battles were fought 0:1 the j Rhine and on the Danube to determine which nation should own the Mississippi or be supreme on the Ganges. But woind it be true to say that in the present war men arc sla\ ing and are being slain in tens of thousands in Belgium, in France, in Servia, in the North Sea, and in the eastern Pacific, because the Emperor of Austria had a CI of anger against Servia!" That, as a final and complete explanation o£ the war, is inadequate to the point of war," continues Dr. Fitchett. "It ia as though someone offered the explosion of a cracker a.s the explanation of an earthquake, or traced Niagara to the bursting of a water-pipe, in a cottage on its bank. Science demands some reasonable proportion betwixt an event and its cause. Is the war, again, due due to the "racehatred" of the Slavs against the Teuton? The rivalry of Slav and Teuton no doubt counts in European politics; it may contribute in a degree to the j war; but it is no explanation. The truth ia, no one can tell exactly who are the Slavs, or what is the exact number of Slavs in the Austrian Empire. It is certain there arc some million quite loyal Slavs in that very composite Empire. The origin of the war of 1914 is certainly not personal. It was personal ambition, perhaps, that made Alexander lead his Greek troops out on their career of battle; it was cerr tainly personal ambition that made Na- | poleon, for nearly twenty years, the ter- I ror of the nations, until the Great Pow- I era at last combined to destroy him, r and dismissed him to end his days on a lonely rock in the Atlantic. But there ■ is no 'Alexander in the present conflict; 1 no Napoleonic ambition explains it. The I Kaiser, for all his faults, has not the ; passion for conquest that burned in the brain of the great Corsican. On 1 the twenty-fifth anniversary of his coronation he solemnly and publicly 'thanked God' that on looking back over those twenty-live years Germany had lived under the fertilising rays of the sun of peace.' The cynic who remembers how deeply the Kaiser is responsible for the system of huge arma- ' ments which has cursed the world for the past twenty-five years, may well smile on reading these words; tut it is quite true that, though tho Kaiser lias spent his entire reign in the preparation for war, he did not, until the present year, aetualy engage in war. Mr Winston Churchill, in a published interview with representatives of the American press, offers an explanation of tho war which at least looks in the direction of its deeper causes. 'lt ia well, 1 lie adds, 'that the democratic nations of the world should realise what is at stake. French, English and American systems of government and civilisation are now brought into cfirect conflict with the highly efficient Prussian bureaucracy and military organisation.' With real insight Mr Churchill put the issues in- • volvcd in the struggle in another way. 'lt i:,,' lie snys, 'the old struggle against | Xapoleon, revived in new terms.' There ' is happily, no 'Napoleon,' with. his 1 matchless genius for war, on the side ! of Germany; his place is filled by ft mili- j tary caste, arrogant, unscrupulous, hard 1 as steel, no doubt, but with something of ' the unreasoning and unyielding quality j of steel. Us triumph would be triumph j of the sword. And in the twentieth ( century of civilised and Christian his- 1 [ fc° r y tho world is not likely to submit to tho empire of the sword. But Mr. r a Winston Churchill's'explanation,' though J t it points in the right direction, it is in- / c adequate. The origin of the present war,

again, is, in a sense, not political. Its explanation is to bo sought in neither the ambition of a conqueror nor tbe armed invasion of ono nation by another. Says l)r. Fitchetti "In the last anaylais tho war is duo to fear; the fear of tho Great Powers of Central .Europe cherish towards each other* the fear bred of the vast armaments with which they can stand to defend themselves from, or to destroy, each other. And the origin of that fear is perfectly clear. It is of recent birth. It did not poison and exasperate the international relations of Europe a generation ago. It is tho direct result of the policy of Bismarck, a policy which he himself described as one of 'blood and iron.' Wellington's principle waa to treat an enemy as if he might one day be a friend. Bismarck';* method, and lie acted upon it in IS7I, was to cripple an enemy, so that, though he hated, ho would bo hariTil, .-d-. That policy sowed the scad of future wars. The 'peace' of 1871 bred in France a passion for revenge; it committed Germany to the task of maintaining its military strength on a scale so vast that revenge would be impossible. In this way was born that system of vast armaments which has been the curse of modern Europe. Tilcy represented tho dismissal of all moral forces in national relationships. Distrust, and the ear born of distrust, became tho ono permanent mood betwixt tho nations. Each knew that it a existence depended upon having a bigger army than its neighbor, and so strained its resources to the point of bankruptcy, to arm ever new battalions.