The Daily News. TUESDAY, MAY 15, 1917. CONFLICTING IDEAS OF WORLD GOVERNMENT.
We are so overwhelmed with the horrors and anxieties of the war that there are few who look beneath the, surface to trace the- inner meanings of the titanic struggle, and yet no intelligent conception of real causes can bo obtained unless a study is made of the operating principles—the ideas and ideals of Britain and Germany. It is in tho conflict there to be found that wo shall discover much light on th< struggle that is reaching its final stages. Tho war must run its course, but in view qtf the terms of peace it is more than ever necessary to safeguard the preservation of the true ideals and to cast forth the false. It is generally accepted chat Britain and her Allies arc contending with all their might and in the plenitude of their resources for the ea'use of liberty, humanity, and the security of the weakei nations. Germany says she is doing the same, but these reasons are invoked by the different nations in different senses. Most of the Germans have aa much liberty as they desire and believe that th- highest good of humanity is co be found in the prevalence Of their own ideas and of their own type of Government and society. Inasmuch as.liberty' is a highly comparative notion, and hu. inanity is a highly variable notion, we are confronted with two types of character, two sets of aims and two ideals of society, so that it is necessary to endeavor to understand both. In an address delivered to the Royal Colonial Institute on December 12 last, Sir Walter Raleigh' threw considerable light on this difficult inquiry. He pointed out that the present struggle was not a war of race, hut a war ol ideas; and that we were contending against an armed doctrine. All belligerents like to believo that their adversaries entertain only base motives, while they themselves act only on the loftiest' ideal promptings. They all cherish themselves and seek to preserve their means of livelihood. The German creed is that of a whole people. By the mesmerism of State Education, by the discipline of universal military service, by the pride of the people in their past victories and by tho fears natural to a nation that finis enemies on all its froits, an absol.itu belief in the State, in war as the Highest activity of the State, and in the right of the State to enslave all its subjects, body and soul, to its purposes, has become the creed of the peoples ii'iUcd under the Prussian monarchy. Tiny have been lured, frightened, drilled and bribed into war. The Germans are already uneasy about their creed and th air system, but there is no escap.'; they have sacrified everything to it; tln-y have impoverished the mind and drilled the imagination of every citizen, so that Germany now appears as having the body of a giant and the mind of a dwarf. By their creed they must stand or fall. The State has absolute power, and only nominal duties to a subordinate God. The State has challenged the soul of man before now, and has alway* been defeated. Trace the history of Germany and therein will be found an explanation of how and why its people are what they are to-day. In the sixteenth century they were rent asunder by the Information, and there was
solution but war, conducted with a fierceness and inhumanity not even equalled h the present war. Whole provinces desolated, whole States bereaved of en, and prostration followed. It was Prussia that revived political ambitions, and the history of Germany from then till now is the history of the welding of the German peoples into a single State by Prussian monarehs and statesmen. German brutality has its origin in German history. It is a Prussian cult which, in Bavaria especially, has developed into a sort of sentivnentalism. The last half century has witnessed the development of Rightfulness as a doctrine bat..! on the principle that it is cheaper to frighten people into submission than to fight them lo the bitter end, but the practice has not answered in the present, war, it has steeled the hearts of Cermany's enemies and suggested that the apostles of Rightfulness are by no means strangers to fear. Such are tho Germans and it is not difficult under the circumstance mentioned to account for their attitude in the present war. To arrive at an accurate conception of the British spirit, it has to be remembered that the nation is insular and that the unit is a type of man independent to the verge of melancholy. Lord Selbome, who presided at Sir Walter Raleigh's address, summed up this trait thus: "I had a great friend who said once 'You never know what the white man is until y m see him alone north of the Zambesi.' What stirs me most is the thought of the men who l'ave trickled (to the war) solitarily from north of the Zambesi." The agelong satire against the English is that •«KW. man olaims the right to go to
Heaven Ills own way. Tlie history of England lias had much to do with moulding the English temper and producing extreme individualism. The men of today have (ho same, inspired recklessness, nerve, coolness and chivalry as in the clays of the individual explorers, pirates and buccaneers. Wis have depended in the past enormously on the initiation and virtue of the individual adventurer, who is practically invincible because he does not wait for orders. Our political system is a training school for rebels, it is in the national life of a people that their moral strength or weakness is discerned. The outcome of the British idea is seen in her noble intervention on behalf of Belgium, while, that of Germany is evidenced by the barbarities, cruelties, and treacheries which mark her conduct of the Tar. Their thesis system suppresses all the gentler instincts of the heart and supplies a basis for abhorent cruelties. In this conflict between Jie English idea and the German idea of world government is reflcctec. the vast contrast in the methods adopted by these rival belligerents. ; If the treacherous assault of the Germans on the liberlies and peace of Europe is rewarded by any solid gain history may forgive them, but tiio people of the British Empire will never do so. The war is worth fighting t' the end,.and whatever may be the nature of the peace that follows, wo ean never have peace with the German ■\ta— th' modern uerman doctrine that there i nothinjr good in the world except what tends to the power and glory of the State—for in the end that doctrine cannot prevail.,,
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Taranaki Daily News, 15 May 1917, Page 4
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1,132The Daily News. TUESDAY, MAY 15, 1917. CONFLICTING IDEAS OF WORLD GOVERNMENT. Taranaki Daily News, 15 May 1917, Page 4
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