WHEN WILL IT END?

Taranaki Daily News, 24 December 1915, Page 12 (Supplement)

WHEN WILL IT END?

(By Frank Morton in Auckland Herald.)' People everywhere are wondering when the war will end. It doesn't matter mucli, unless this war ends war. A few hundred of thousand of lives more or less, a few horrors added to the massed horror of the time: what of it, if peace is only to be the lull that precedes new abominations? Such a peace the Central European Powers would welcome; but such a peace the Allies, in their present temper, will not consider —happily for all of us. But if every soldier in the world dies it will be well worth while—if only this war ends war. That is the fact that we shall do well to keep determinedly in mind. We are fighting, not for the suppression of Germany or Austria, but for the whole future security of the race. And to any such peace as the peace we are looking for Austria and Germany will be utterly inimical. They want a patched-up peace, a period of stagnation during which Great Britain and Russia may once again go comfortably off to sleep. Better that we should settle this thing once for all while we are still awake.

For war, it is well to understand, is a politicians' game. The great bulk of men and women on the earth hate and loathe it; but it is still a favourite tool in the nand of so-called democratic legislatures. That is merely because legislatures generally fall below the average intelligence of the people. The highest human intellect should concentrate on the problems of government; but the intellect of the typical legislator rises very little above the lowest. Just pretend to yourself that any legislative body represents the highest v.-isdom of the nation, and you will at on*» see how frankly ludicrous and absurd the pretence is. The outstanding fact of all democratic systems is that the rulers chosen seldom have any special fitness to rule. Germany and Austria had ;>» initial enormous advantage because < li is ruled by a powerful military caste with an expert knowledge of the game of war. It is only in Great Britain that in war time generals must be controlled and hampered by glorified grocers. So we have to give up the idea of winning by our skill in arms; we mean to win, and we shall win, by persistence, by the heroism of our sons and brothers, and most of all, by money. All of which, however, is rather by the way. I am not seeking to stimulate recruiting. This provision of men will soon now become a mere matter of business with which our Government will have to grapple honestly, whether they wish to do it or not. Every extra man we can put into the field will shorten the war; every extra man will lessen the risks oi the men already there. It is criminal folly to allow men physically fit to sit back and dawdle at home, with this great business only half completed. The time for appeals to enthusiasm and patriotism has passed.

But if the wickedness of war were better realised there would be no lack of men. A curious thing, surely, that after two thousand years of Christianity young men of our race can 101 l indifferent while everything that is precious to us in imperilled by the onward march of Antichrist. A curious thing that, with women and girls suffering fiendish, deliberate tortures in the war zone, our women and girls are prepared to meet in friendship the men (of a sort) who doggedly stay at home. There is no hope unless this war ends war. The condition of the world to-day is such that the nations cannot continue to keep up huge parasitic military establishments. However the war ends, the grip of poverty will have all peoples by the throats. If we are merely to commence preparations for another war, the terror will stay with us.