The Daily News. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 1916. THE APOTHEOSIS OF HATE.

Taranaki Daily News, 21 November 1916, Page 4

The Daily News. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 1916. THE APOTHEOSIS OF HATE.

It has been left for the Germans to demonstrate that it is only a step from the deification of mortals to the deification of hate. They may now be considered to have placed the coping-stone on their Temple of Kultur, wherein all super-mortals are expected to bow down and worship the only groat War Lord they know—the Kaisen who- has replaced the fabled Jupiter, and' whose mandate has gone forth to all peoples: "Whoever presumes to thwart my will must be anathema," That, in effect, is the sum and substance of the latest phase of German hate as indicated by a distinguished neutral in this morning's cables. Wo have heard a good deal, about the Hymn of Hate, and now we have an insight into the means adopted to sear this loathsome sentiment into the hearts of the Huns, whose primitive instincts are still predominant after many hundreds of years' contact with a civilised, a. humanised, and a God-fearing world. There has been no German outrage that has branded the country with the broad arrow of degradation like this utteriv depraved and monstrous hatred for Britain. But to have invoked the aid of the Church, the Clergy, and the Sunday School to foster and cherish this senseless hatred shows to what depths of infamy the Germans have descended, and that the insatiable lust of conquest and domination ha? obliterated all that tends to make a nation noble or worthy of a place in the civilised world. We - are told that the whole Church, together with the Navy League, are keeping up a violent hate campaign by leaflets, by sermons, by Sunday School hymns, newspapers, kinemas, and even by prayers—though to whom such prayers are addressed we dare not hazard a guess, although the presumption is that they are offered up to the God of Hate, who was probably the deity most favored by the Huns in their early days. After nearly 2000 years of Christianising influences these veneered! barbarians have harked back to the ferocity and frightfulness of their first progenitors, hence the truly awful spectacle presented to the world to-day—a nation maddened by the restraint placed on their attempted world-domination, and rendered desperate by the fear of their approaching fate. Yet even in Germany there are large numbers of Socialists, whose pet theory is the universal brotherhood of man. There are also Socialists in Britain, but there is a mighty gulf between the twain. It was only a short while since that a prominent trade unionist at the last Birmingham Conference gave the following reply to the amazing question: "What are we fighting for?" This reply took the form of an inquiry as to whether the Socialists of Germany who might attend the forthcoming Conference would be the Socialists whom the Kaiser sent to Belgium, after the massacres, to persuade the Belgian people that they ought to welcome German rule, and, if so, whether the Belgian workmen who escaped massacre would sit in the same room? Would the French miners whose homes had been in possession of the Germans for two years, and whose wives and daughters had been abducted, be represented there? . •. . He hoped the Allies would be so successful that they would be able to gay: "We shall only discuss terms of peace when you have got rid of your mad Kaiser and of the ghouls who devour human flesh." That is the answer to the question as to what ,we are fighting for, and it is also the reason for the campaign of hate. Foiled of world-' domination, there is, apparently, no-; thing left for the Germans to do but to hate with the venomous ferocity of an enraged serpent, so that there is but one taok for the Allies to accomplish—the crushing of the reptile.