THE HIGHER PRINCIPLE.

Taranaki Daily News, 13 November 1915, Page 9 (Supplement)

THE HIGHER PRINCIPLE.

SIR EDWARD GREY'S IMMORTAL SERVICE. Mr. Benjamin Kidd, the author of "Social Evolution" and "Principles of Western Civilisation," in an interview in the Daily Xews, points out what are the winning principles in this great fight. "Go back to Darwin and natural selection," he said. "It is the nation with the highest principle that is destined to survive, and in this case that nation is not Germany. We have grasped the higher principle—Sir Edward Grey has held fast to it—and our business is to organise and develop it as Germany has developed the lower. We have not yet realised that the strength of Germany lies in her reliance on organised idealism, with William 11. as its central figure. The German Emperor is, in my estimation, immeasurably the greatest man in civilisation, and we ought to recognise it. But he has turned the edge of all those gifts against himself by allowing German policy to be ruled by people who throw over the principles of civilisation. "Sir Edward Grey's immortal service to Britain in this war is that he has formulated the case against Germany's military caste clearly in terms of the principles of civilisation. The spectre which haunts the minds of Germany's ruling classes now above all other preoccupations is the fear that the nature of this case should ultimately penetrate to the mind of the German people.

I "For Sir Edward Grey's service to civilisation lias this remarkable effect. Tt lias made any proposal for the making of peace with the present rulers of Germany almost like a proposal for compounding a felony. Civilisation may yet have to act on this fact. We have'no quarrel with the German people. Only with their rulers. The most direct way of resolving this situation so as to bring in the full power of civilisation belaud it may yet be for the great Allies at no distant date to declare the United States of Europe. "1 do not believe that this war will end war, but it will give the world the greatest opportunity it has known in modern years of freeing itself from the incubus of force. This is the greatest example we have ever had before us of what war really means, and we must seize the impression it creates and use it as an instrument of escape from the era of organised force. We must set the higher principle before us and convert the psv.hology of nations. Remember that our own country stands in a unique postion. We have retained our freedom and rejected the domination of force. To recede now would be to betray the future hopes of humanity. If we cannot stop conscription, Prussianism remains enthroned, and we may as well put the world's shutters up. "Lord Kitchener has still in reserve the greatest recruiting appeal of all. lie has simply to tell the British people that, as under no possible conditions can he have conscription, he asks for our last man. He will get him. That is the British way.''