THE DEAD HAND IN HISTORY.

Taranaki Daily News, 22 September 1915, Page 6

THE DEAD HAND IN HISTORY.

THE CURSE OF CUSTOM. (By "Tohunga" in Auckland Herald). , The dead hand grips us in a thousand ways, but hardest when we think that wo are governed by our own intelligence and thus do not perceive its clutching guidance. The moment that we say, frankly, "custom" we admit the possibility of revision and need not let the dead hand of the past interfere overmuch without thinking. For ancient custom is usually good enough to follow until it conflicts with the needs pf the day and is only pernicious when it becomes blind prejudice, closing our eyes to new conditions and preventing us from breaking new paths. In "worldpolitics," particularly, the dead hand has often throttled intelligence and reconsideration, not merely by the prejudices of the ignorant and uninformed, but as visibly by the preconceptions inoculated into students of history and national leaders of renown.

For example: A man like Cromwell is governed in hi« diplomacy by the ineradicable belief that Spain was the enemy of freedom. In the middle of the seventeenth century Spain was already decadent as a great power. It is easy to say "decadent," of course, but in this case Spain had visibly gone to pieces. Her monstrous pretensions, the ambitious tyranny that had threatened Northern freedom and overshadowed the new continents, had been pricked by English and Dutch—English, not British, you will notice—and was dwindling like a bladder. The Spanish bid for world-dominion had vanished and another menace to Europe was advancing in the shape of French autocracy, yet Cromwell, nurtured on the once-essential dread of Spain, never changed with the times. To him, the Armada was always in the Channel, the little "Revenge" still fought for a day and a night her lonely battle against fifty-three. Yet Huguenots were then born and wed who would be driven into exile. Dutchmen ware full-grown who would hold Louis XIV. at bay; Englishmen were at school who would die on European battlo-groiv.ids to save the free nations from the Bourbons of Fiance. Cromwell was guided in this by the dread hand of the Ellznbetliians, and was blind, in his reading of history, to the warning signs of his own day. But, it may be said, Cromwell was only an ignorant brewer, a great soldier but » poor ruler and a worse diplomatist. Let that pass, then, and take Salisbury, of our own time. lard Salisbury was not an ignorant brewer; he was the able chief of the greatest family in England, the direct heir of the traditions, the wealth, the standing, the education and the sources of information, which had given the Cecils and the Balfours place among British statesmen for three hundred years. Yet Salisbury, taught by the men who had fought Napoleon, influenced by the prejudices anri preconceptions of Britain's stupendous struggle with her French neighbor, transferred to France in the nineteenth century the same unreasoning antagonism that Cromwell had for Spain in the Seventeenth. To say that in this he only shared the feelings of many of his countrymen is quite true, uut tnls only tegs the question, for the dead hand guided them all. Germany was a kindred nation, and not to be distrusted, for had not the Prussians been our allies two generations before? France was still regarded as a disguised ogre whom it was treachery to Nelson to do anything but distrust.

Imagine it! Less than a quarter of a century ago Lord Salisbury, with almost unanimous British approval, gave Heligoland to Germany—to Germany which was already 'Prussianised, to Germany swollen by the crushing of Denmark, the overthrow of Austria, the plunder of France. A few years later, our same Lcrd Salisbury, beyond all doubt and question a typical Englishman and a patriotic stateman—trained, c ducated, experienced, but prejudiced—nearly involved the Empire in war with France, over the paltry Fashoda incident, and this also with very general approval. He could see that Germany was the enemy, that France had ceased to be a menace to the world, and had become a natural guardian of civilised peace. He could not realised that, in Berlin, unscrupulous schemers planned and plotted ceaselessly to create international dissensions, playing a "cut-throat euchre" game of diplomacy to gather in for themselves the prize of world-dominion. The dead hand guided him. Saiishury thought as did Pitt, but in a new Europe, of which the Pitts never dreamed. ]f you think that such frames of mind arc peculiar to British statesmen, necessarily harmonious in thought with a British democracy which owes its strength to its steadiness and reluctance to change, turn to the part plated by Russia in the attack made by Germany upon France in 1870. Russia threatened to attack Austria if that country assisted France, and only later, when Bismarck was preparing in 1870 to "bleed France white," did Russia assist Britain to maintain international peace. We may dismiss all the many explanations offered since by Russian writers as complicated and unsatisfying, and may safely accept the obvious truth that' Russia still thought of France as Napoleonic and menacing, and that Russian statesman did not realise their mistake until too late to prevent Prussia, flushed with repcuted victories, from absorbing all modern Germany and riveting the bonds of va=sallage upon Austria. They were obsessed by the burning of Moscow. They feared the dead hand of N'apoleo;i the Great in the shoddv "love of Xapo■lion the Little. ' "

We British arc a little loath to speak ni our kings as individuals until tliev licve been a long time departed, but there is a recent British king who deserves the grateful thoughts of every man v. ho realises what we fight for today. That is Kdu-ard VII. Ho saw the iiu-anjng of Herman -preparations, lie foresaw that in the Croat Alliance of today lay Europe's only hope, and he worked with all tiie strength that was in him to bring that Alliance about. Edward brushed aside by his example and i.ifnence the cobweb prejudices which divided us from the French. Edward reminded the Italian people of British friendship in their time of need, and shook the confidence of the Italian monarchy in the Triple Alliance. Edward convinced British statesmen of Britain's peril, and laid in firm ground the foundations of the Alliance that is saving civilisation now.

If we try to understand how a king so unassuming and so unpretentious as Edward was, so clear-sighted and so singularly sound and successful in his diplomacy, we can easily find the reason in his instinctive judgment of men and in his long exclusion by constitutional custom from participation in affairs of state. Sixty years of extraordinary inwith European life, of complete irresponsibility of observation, of growing identification with new thoughts, new ideas, and a new Europe, had taught hto to trait hit own judgment and aires

him the opportunity to ponder over the situation in silence and to realise the only remedy. However that may be, Edward VII. was the greatest statesman of our generation, not perhaps by the possession of the greatest natural ability, but certainly because he was guided not by the dead hand of the past but by the living hand of the present. He rightly read his history and saw that "the enemy" changes as the nations "in their turn to tyrants fall."