A BLOW TO CIVILISATION.

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

A BLOW TO CIVILISATION.

Tlic whole policy represents an effort to put back the hands on the clock of civilisation (continues Dr. Fitehett, in Life), For tho experiment of building an Empire 011 brute force, and cementing it by fear is not new. History has seen may such empires, fierce, masterful, tyrannical. It is easy to recite tileir names—Babylon, Assyria, Persia, Greece, llome. They all failed I History is strewn with their wrecks, and has written their epitaph. In ths> present instance the Balkan War i brought tlio strain of these vast armaments to the breaking-point. It seemcd to have shifted in some miaroscopic . degree the centre of political gravity. Instantly, Germany undertook, at the cost of £50,000,000, to increase its military strength by 300,000 officers and men. France replied by extending the j term of service for its conscripts fifty jp-er cent .Out of every French lad's life I tlireo years must be spent in the bar- ! racks! Does anyone wonder that Europe suffered from 'nerve-strain'? It was in a mood in which a whisper, a gesture, a suspicion, might bring an explosion. Let the exact incident which thing the Great Powers into battle in the present case be remembered. Germany and Russia accused each other of mobilising. Each knew that the Power which could mobilise iirst would strike iirst; and the armament of each was 011 such a scale that a stroke might well be fatal. From that fear of being outrun in the race for mobilisation the war sprang. It is impossible to believe that the Kaiser would have deliberately begun war with Italy a doubtful ally, limit Britain a certain enemy, Austria estranged with Scrvia, and Russia in close alliance with France. All the Powers were, in a sense, top-heavy with vast armaments; a push—a vibration — a breath of air—might tumble them to wreck—this wreck of actual battle. And tliis is exactly what has happened. Germany stands for the principle that, betwixt the Great Powers, treaties are valid only so long as they are convenient. In the public ethics of Germany, as soon as it becomes inconvenient a treaty is a mere "scrap of paper," and is '.as worthless as any other scrap of paper. Good faith among tho great nations, in other words, does not bind. Moral forces have 110 authority. Each nation is safo only so long as it is stronger than its neighbor. And for that dreadful and wicked forgctfillness of Ilis laws, God is smiting the nations by suffering them to reap in blood the harvest of the black and dreadful seed they have sown. What wo seo is what must happen to the world when such non-moral forces as "blood and iron" are allowed to determine national relationships, and each Power holds that it is entitled to indict any injury on Ha neighbour which its greater strength enables it to inflict.