IDEALS OF EMPIRE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 169, 23 December 1914, Page 5

IDEALS OF EMPIRE.

| BRITISH AND GERMAN COMPARED, j LESFONS GERMANY MUST IJ3AUN. The arrival oil' Southampton yesterday of the first contingent' of Canadian .troops forms (says the London Tunes of October !)), the second chapter of t'he e'l.ject lesson begun by tile Indian forces, and furnishes another ocular proof of llie solidarity of the British Empire, The spontaneous and eager participation of the self-governing British Dominions and o!' the native. Indian Princes in tha war is a fact of much deeper significance thai; appears on the surface. It touches tin underlying causes of this awful conllict, decides the question of right and wrong:, a,iul so miaikes certain Uie eventual issue. For the student of [olitical history and human evolution :t is the weightiest of all the facts that are presenting themselves to his gaze ,in the greatest drama the world lias eier seen. The fundamental struggle now heing put to the liaxard is between two political ideals. Underneath all I'lie surface incidents and inlluences that have involved nine nations in war, with as many more trembling on its margin, lies the conviction of their Imperial destiny held by the German ■j < ople. Tiiis conviction, deduced from ■history .Hid confirmed by philosophy, has Ixen meiihodically impressed 011 a people iceuliarly susceptible to intellectual teaching, and .has gradually taken possession of t'liem. THE iSALT OF THE EARTH. The destiny so held out can only be achieved by removing the obstacle of British rule, which blocks the way in every direction; and this can only he done by force, not by agreement or tieaties, because nothing less than the supersession of British by German rule is involved. Justification is found not merely in Germany's need of expansion, but in the essentially false and immoral character of British rule. According to the German reading of history, the British Empire has been won by theft and trickery—the' other day English prisoners in Germany were received liy the crowd with shouts of "colony thieves"—and is held together by weak rule. Now—so runs the German theory —rule by a weak nation is wrong andcontrary to the laws of development, and therefore, contrary to t'he -welfare of mankind. It is immoral; and such is tlu- British rule, because the British are an effete, decadent and worn-out people, who have 110 right to a -worldempire. Their Empire - is, in fact, a, sham. The interests of mankind and the future, development of the human race demand that the weak British rule should be swept away anil superseded by the strong rule which only the virile, German people—"the salt of the earth" —are able to exercise. GERMANY'S LOFTY MISSION.

Tlie plan for accomplishing this moral i and lofty mission was to crush France while Russia was fully engaged with Austria, occupy Belgium, and seize Al- 1 geria, thus gaining command of a sea- | board 011 the North Sea, the Channel, 1 the Atlantic, and the Mediterranean. In this position, with unlimited financial resources extracted from France, preparations for the subjugation of Great Britain could ■be carried out at leisure and 011 a scale suHicient to command success. The plan was, as we all know, upset by the "scrap of paper" guaranteeing the neutrality of Belgium, ( which brought the intended eventual j victim prematurely into the fray in I company with the rest. "We have taken [ the field against Russia and France," I ' sa : d the Hamburger Nachrichten at the ' I outset, "but at bottom it is England wo ( are fighting everywhere." The ideas and ( intentions thus outlined have been set 1 out by a great number of German 1 . writers and speakers, of whom only one, General von Bcrnliardi, appears to be j well-known to English readers, and lie | is one of the most moderate and judicial. A fuller exposition of German 1 theories and policy may be found in Dr Charles Snrolea's book 011 "The Anglo-German Problem," and Professor Cramb's "Germany and England." General von Bernhardi is comparatively mild on the subject of Great Britain's failure 11s a World Power, but lie suggests that if her hands were tied by a great waf the "centrifugal forces of lier loosely compacted World Empire" might be set in motion, that the self-governing Do- * minions might seize the opportunity to cut themselves loose, and that a revolution would probably break out in India. In any case he thinks that the Dominions "can be completely ignored so far as concerns any European theatre of war." VIEWS PUT TO THE TEST. These views have now been put to the test, and have proved to be totally false. Tlie action of the Dominions, without exception, and of the native ] Indian rulers, has conclusively refuted them, and at the same time triumphantly vindicated the British prin- ] ciples not for Germany alone, but for the j world at large, and for some of our own politicians at home. The miscalculation I of Indian feeling is particularly instructive. Here we have an irrefutable, proof that the world-empire of Great Britain | rests u|)on a far more stable basis than superficial observers have supposed, and that the British ideal of world-power is the true one. It rests 011 the twin I principles of liberty and diversity, and . i it is these, not the opposite German or ■ j Prussian principles of compulsion and 1 uniformity, which are truly in keeping with the laws of human development. > The German attempts at colonial ex. pansion have, been a lamentable failure ; because! they violate, those deep-seated principles, aiul the German claim of a superior moral right to rule on the ground of superior strength is based 011 a superficial and fallacious conception of the nature of strength and weakness in world polities. If, indeed, we had ; borne ourselves cravenly in this crisis, i and had behaved as some of our politi- ■ cians would have had us behave, the - German estimate of our Imperial weak- ' ness might have been justified. The ' 1 Indian rulers and the Dominions have J rallied to the flag, because it is nian- ' fully upheld in a just cause. The Ger- ' mans will learn through bitter disillusionment that their teachers are wrong, and that our apparently weak rule con. coals a virility equal to their own, and more stable because rooted in liberty. ; South Africa presents this lesson in tie ; most direct and convincing form, because there the Boers, converted by f British rule to be its enthusiastic supporters, arc defending it against the Germans, to whom they looked as saviours before they knew what British rule was like. Their choice is as delili- } crate as it is decided, and 110 German thinker can honestly misread the lesson it contains or ignore the contrast it offers to Alsace-Lorraine under German rule.