SERVING THE COUNTRY.

Taranaki Daily News, 23 June 1915, Page 4

SERVING THE COUNTRY.

Many of the leading papers ef the country favor a cessation of party strife just now and the formation of a national ministry. The Wellington Post is the. latest convert to this view. It pnta tlie position convincingly in these terms):—-Nobody who really understands the position lias, according to the Leader of the Opposition, been in. the least bit alarmed by the bogey of another appeal to tlie constituencies with which the Government endeavored to frighten the electors of the Bay of Islands and Taumarunui. If the country has not been alarmed by flic prospect, it is owing to its conviction that tilie bark of the politicians is much worse than their bite, and that after carrying the fight to the last ditch and exhausting themselves in arriving at an indecisive result, they would accept the inevitable and settle dowYi to a lasting truce. The people of New Zealand are practically unanimous in considering that, in reconstructing his Cabinet on national lines, Mr. Asquith has done the right thing. It is safe to say that Mr. Massey and Sir Joseph Ward do not suffer from the judgment of an overwhelming majority of their fellow-colonists on this point. But if they approve of what Mr. Asquith has done, why do Ihey not follow his lead? The reasons which he gives for the momentous step apply with equal force to our own ease. The responsibility placed upon our own Government is, of course, infinitely smaller-. On the other hand, the balance of parties is so close as to render the carrying on of our Government >on traditional lines quite impossible, though there was no absolute impossibility in Great Britain. "There had been no call for any change in tho national policy," said Mr. Asquith, 'Which is to pursue the war at any cost to a victorious issue. But he came reluctantly to the conclusion that there should he a broadening of the Ibasia of Government, in order to eliminate even a semblance of a onesided party character." Tlie same broadening is needed here, and for equally cogent reasons. Let Mi - . Massey frankly recognise the fact and cease "daring the Opposition to force a dissolution. If he called such men as Sir Joseph Ward, Dr. MeNab and Mr. Myers to his Cabinet he would be playing the part of a patriots and he would reap a patriotja reward in promoting t!he interests of the country and the Empire at a time of unexampled stress and peril.

■■SOMETHING OP A SYSTEM. Waterloo waa not the defeat of a nation, and it was more than the defeat' of a man. It waa the smashing of %, system. It meant the final deliverance Of Europe from military despotism (for a hundred years. It lifted a burden and a shadow from a continent. It cleared the'way for the peaceful national and material development of all the peoples of central and western Europe. As. one enthusiastic writer-puts !t, the sun shone over Europe for the first time for twenty years on the mornln* effcer Waterloo. If the occasion hud been turned to better advantage *y tfc» statesmen of the day it would not hav* been necessary later in the century for the Low Countries and for Italy to suffer the pangs of another national birth, but the fact that the adjustments decided on at Vienna and Paris were Incotnpldto. jn no way diminishes the importance of the actual battle. There had been greater battles but none more decisive. If any man' is disposed to regard the present situation in 'Europe light-heartedly, let him reflect on the long years of pain and struggle that led up to Waterloo and on the longer years that were necessary to allow the Continent to recover from the ravages of the Napoleonic wars, diet him consider that Ormany to-day holds a military position comparable with that held by Napoleon when he directed campaigns in Spain from the (Russian frontier; and let him ponder that not until another and a far greater Waterloo has been fought and won will Prussian militarism cease to bo a menace to the peace of the world—'Lyttelton Times. THE ADRIATIC.

"Hitherto," says a writer in the Contemporary Review, "Italy has trusted to the. fact that Austria-Hungary has no wrt further south than Cattaro, and ,hat Cattaro is commanded by t'hc Monenegrin guns on Mount Lovcen. The nfcrancc to the straita is open and Tnr.nto much nearer to thorn than Fola, he Austro-flungarian naval port, so ha£ though her eastern shores lie open o the enemy's fleet, Italy can send her hips to the Adriatic Sea without having to fight her way past a powerful laval .base belonging to the enemy." The great world war, this writer points mt, is altering this kind of unstable equilibrium in the Adriatic. There are jossihilites that when peace is declared (Bosnia and Herzegovina, with the Mmation littoral, will be in Slav hands, uwl that the disjointed lAustro-TTungar-an Empire will be replaced by an aniutious and flourishing Slav State with ;he force of Russia behind it. Should ,'hirope agree to the eventual partition uid destruction of Alibauia, the inevitable, result will be that the eastern shores of the Adriatic will fall into Slav i-aiids and that Italy will he reduced to :hn position of a third-class Power. This is a condition of affairs that the Italians could not tolerate for a moment. For the mastery of the Adriatic is as rifa.l to Italy as the command of the S'orlh Sea is to Britain. It also throws uhlitional light on the real cause of the rupture with Austria. The tyranny of Austria in her Italian-speaking provinces las not driven Italian statesmen to <lclare war as much as the menacing phnuxmt of a mightier Russia, with thrcatonng tentacles, spread along the Adriatic <hore. "Now she sees the Triple Alianee crumbling about; her ears, and the nap of Europe in process of reconsh-nc-ion." continues this writer in the Coneni.porarly. "she is bound to protect herclf. if not against Austria, at any rate igain-t, Austria's successor on the Dal-I mifian coast. iPTer statesmen anil ad-I "irals have long since laid down (hat! i-li.»iever Turkey lost Albania no other j big but that of an independent State, •onld he raised in that country, and ! ■hat, as far as regards A.vlova, Ttaly |

could 11 over allow another great Power to take possession of that magnifibent naval 'base. Italy's excuse'is that, for her the command of the Straits of Otnmto is a matter of life and death, and that in the crash of worlds rflio must look to her own safety, oven if Albania and Europe regard her action with, at (lie best, but sullen acquiescence."