The Daily News. MONDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1914. A SORROWFUL FIGURE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 112, 5 October 1914, Page 4

The Daily News. MONDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1914. A SORROWFUL FIGURE.

I "The most sorrowful and pitiable man in Europe," according to Mr Andrew Carnegie, is the Kaiser. The sympathetic multimillionaire is reported as saying that the military caste of Germany arranged the war while the Kaiser was away, and that when he returned the mischief was done. It is not hard to understand that Mr Carnegie, whose hebby of peace-making has been so sedulously encouraged by the Kaiser—that constant patron of a Little Navy for Britain and a Great Navy for himself—should be loth to recognise that he has been mado the catspaw of German intrigue (writes the Auckland Herald)'. The Kaiser may very we'd bo "sorrow-, ful" without being in the slightest degree "pitiable." Whether he was absent or not absent when the small Servian cloud first arose in the Balkans does not affect tho matter. For long years Germany has been preparing for war of conquest and booty. Her plans included all that sflie had done and much that she was unable to do. The violation of Belgian neutrality, and the crushing of France by masked attack across an almost undefended neutral frontier, have been the accepted principles of a plan of campaign unprecedented in its callous contempt for national rights and. international obligations. The Kaiser has always been an autocrat, choosing his Ministers as he would, and nominating his councillors as "ho pleased, dictating in every state department, and personally superintending every state activity. Possibly he was not able to stop when he had once set in motion the vast military machinery under his control, and found himself confronted by Britain after he imagined that Belgium would find no champion. Certainly he has always intended to tear up treaties, to remake tho map of Europe and of tho world, to trample roughshod over the nations with tho huge army and the growing navy of which he is the boasting "war lord." If he is "sorrowful" to-day it is only because his plans havo miscarried, in spite of the villainous ruthlcssness with which they have been concocted and applied, only because he has struck hi 3 blow and struck without winning, only ' because the end is at hand of the brutal and barbaric dreamß upon which he had set his egotistical ambition. There is a world of difference between tkis "sorrowing" and that of Belgium—outraged, plundered, violated, bleeding from tjie . unprovoked attack of tho monarch who was pledged to protect it, and from the inhuman violence of a militarism designed to dominate the whole -world. Tho pity of right-thinking men the world over will be exhausted long before it reaches the prime mover in these J international crimes, that foiled and j desperate Kaiser who of himself is nothing, but as tho autocrat of a brutalised and demoralised nation has been the greatest power for evil known to modern civilisation. He fights for booty, and no more deserves pity than a pirate who attacks a fighting ship in mistake for a defenceless merchantman. As one of the free states which aro on tho list of British countries from which these German bandits propose to exact "booty proportionate to their enormous sacrifices," New Zealand has every reason to consider what her position would have been had the plans of "the most sorrowful and pitiable man in Europe" not been brought to nought. The British Empire freely acknowledges and loyally defends our self-government. For better of for worse wo can do in hew Zealand exactly as we like. There is no external compulsion upon us of any kind whatever. We make our own laws, cnfoTcc our own order, train and arm our own troops, manage our own schools, and are in every conceivable way a free, independent, and democratic state. To say that we jre loyal to the Empire is only to say that we aro loyal to ourselves, that we have sufficient manliness to appreciate the worth and value of the magnanimous Empire of whose founders and defenders wo are kith and kin. What would be our fate if, in the sacking and looting of the Empire, New Zealand became the booty of the "sorrowful" Kaiser and bis hordes r Our fate would bo as tho fato of Poland, of Schleswig, of Alsace-Lor-raine. Insolent military governors would slash our laws to pieces with their swords. A foreign soldierly would strut our streets and insult our oitizens. Our language would be outlawed in court, school, and public office. Oerman goods would enter free of duty, while other goods contributed to the maintenance of an alien tyranny. Our young men would l>o compelled to serve as soldiers in Prussian fashion, and be drafted away to shed their blood in extending the hateful German rule. This is not idle theorising. It is the treatment moled out, by Prussia and Germany to tho European provinces they have seized a s booty. This will not be our fate, thanks to the Allied nationsBritish, Belgian, French, and Russian—who will not weary of war until the German menace is destroyed for over. Then the Kaiser may bo "sorrowful" indeed for enfranchised Germany, freed from Prussian domination,'will hardly pity him.