The Daily News. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1915. NATIONS FIGHTING FOR THEIR SOULS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 221, 25 February 1915, Page 4

The Daily News. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1915. NATIONS FIGHTING FOR THEIR SOULS.

To this pass has the world come, says the Dunedin Star, after nineteen centuries of Christianity. How it has reached this terrific stage of being, and' why onehalf and more of a civilised mankind have, temporarily at least, thrown aside as though they were dead flowers, those graces, amenities, and humanities that constituted the salt of life in order to leap back into the . savageries of that ]>rimeval clime, from out of which, in the slow passing of the centuries, they had emerged, does not now immediately matter. There have been great wars witfiin living memory wherein the dead have been numbered by tens of thousands, but each of these was limited in its scope. How different the war of to-day, wherein the greater part of what has hitherto been regarded as the civilised world his 'vela red war without mercy against Germany. Not war in order to beat Germany, but war to conquer Germany so that she shall no longer be the Germany that has been made manifest to the world during the past seven months. Tn a sense Germany is already beaten. She has failed of her objective, she has no hope of attaining it, her navy is impotent save for acts of piracy and murder, and her people are being throttled by forces of which they had never heard. But this is not (lie goal of the Allies' intent. 'When Britain went to war it was primarily in defence of her pledged word and on behalf of a violated treaty. To-day and for months past every statesman In England has been telling us that the re- | storation of Belgium and the safe-guard-ing of France from dismemberment ire but parts, and subsidiary ones at that, of the infinitely greater work of crushing beyond hope of resurrection what is known as Prussian Militarism. And what England declares in this relation is also being said by Belgium, France, and Russia. Belgium—a country of starving millions, of heaps of ruins, human skulls, and little mounds of earth, a veritable Golgotha, a measureless cemetery, yet a land in which tin- spirit of hope still lives —will fight on and on and on to the end. "You see you have lost everything!" a fine Punch cartoon makes the conquering War Lord say to King Albert, as he

surveys the scene. "Yes, but not mv sor.l!" is the quiet answer. And, as in Belgium, so in Franee and Russia add th» world over. Nations to-day are fighting for their souls. M. Viviani, the Premier, from his place in the Chamber of DcmiHo', a few days before Christines, told hi? countrymen that the war would go on. Not alone for the sake of Belgii'i integrity, but because Alsace and Tjor.-aine must be brought back to the mother fold, and not for compensation for the wrongs France ' had suffered—these conceivably might be secured at it price—but because the spirit that animates and dominates Germany is an evil one, and therefore, in the wider interests of the race, must be stamped out of existence. The same message in different form had previously been spoken by the President of the Chamber (M. Beschanel). France, ha .declared, stands to-day for respect for treaties and the independence of Europe and human liberty. The one question is whether matter shall enslave spirit or whether the world shall be the blood-sta:ned prey of violence. At the moment their words w«j spoken both the Premier and President knew that within 100 miles of where they stood, could be seen the armies of an tneniy that had dispossessed 2.000,100 of their countrymen of their homes; that their main industrial centres were in the hands of ihe German War Lords; find that th c very walls of Paris bore witness to the presence of the foe. Yet France, through her Ministers, demands awl will persist in war without mercy. From th e whole field of battle the cry i? the same. Little Sorvia, though bleeding to death, fights on; mighty Russia, though she. might close with her enemy to-morrow if she wished, fights on;,and England, on whom they all depend, whose honor thrills the world as it never yjt lias moved it, watches, waits, and works, sleeplessly and ceaselessly, for the same great purpose. Germany has challenged and defied the world; •Tierefore England "will see thc thing through."