THE USES OF HATE.

Taranaki Daily News, 9 April 1918, Page 6

THE USES OF HATE.

WHY WE SHOULD NURSE OUR WRATH. FOR THE HUN BLACKGUARDS. The world is so crowded with events ■i.st now that people are in danger of forgetting that the war on the Germans is a personal matter as well as an international one. Those of our sons, of our brothers, who have fallen into the hands ol the Germans and endured what 4b the common experience of all British prisoners will never forget them. Nor will w». With equal intensity of hattoA far the perpetrators we should remember t'lie fate of the women and children of Belgium. Why should we nurse our wrath to keep it warm? Because (says Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in the London Times) hate has its uses in war, as the Gennans have long discovered. "It steels the mind and sets the resolution as no other emotion can do. So much do tliey feel this that the Germans are constrained to invent all sorta of reasons for hatred ajainst us, who have in truth never injured them in any way save that history and geography both place us between them and their ambitions. To nourish hatred they invent every lie against \\s, aid so they attain a certain national solidity. We have the true reasons for tli-s emotion; we have suffered incredible things from a foe who is void of all chivalry and humanity. Yet though we have this material we do little to use it and to spread it. How powerful it is can besifbe told by looking into our own hearts."'

"I had occasion recently to talk with a British officer who had endured cap*. Jivity in Germany. With a voice which was husky with passion, trembling with the violence of his own feelings, he told mo what he and his comrades had gone through. I hal read such things in cold 'itint, but to hear them from one who had seen and felt they had an indescrib•iMe effect. I was trembling as he was, before he had finished. This officer, of senior regimental rank, a man of dignity and refinement, was taken wounded at the end of 1914. vVith his comrades in captivity he was starved during the long two days' journey from the front to his prison. At one spot, he thinks that it was Cologne, a soup canteen upon wheels was rolled up to their compartment in order to mock them. Still starving and suffering tortures from their wounds, thiy reached the town of their captivity. Weak, shaken, and unnerved, they as. sembled outside the station, hardly able t) stand after their dreadful journey. What ensued can only bo described in Irs own forcible words. 'They kicked our behinds all the way up the street. There was not one of us who had not hi" behind kicked.' These were British officers, honorable gentlemen, many of them wounded, now, helpless under circumstances which have in all ages appealed to the chivalry of the captors.

"And we, when a German flier is caught red-handed with his apparatus litdy for the murder of the civilians of London, hurry him away that he may have a hot supper. "This officer was, as I was told by a tlvrd party, a witness of a dreadful incidfnt of the burning hut. One of the Ivts in the prison camp took fire. It War night, and the door had been locked on the .outside. The key could not be found. One of the inmates, a jailor i red to get out through the narrow window. The sentry of the hut rushetf foiwrfrd. The prisoners who were spectators thought that ho was going to draw the man through. What he actual ;y did was to pass his bayonet through the sailor's throat. I am told that the horrified onlookers dropped on their men of all the allied countries, ui d swore to God that so long as they lived they would never show mercy to anv man of German blood. Can we bli.me them? Would we not have felt the same?

"Many of us," says the writer, "could eonceive of a peace ■which included some compromise upon frontiers, so long as Belgium was intact. Many also would lie content to sacrifice Russia, if she persisted in her treason. But not jone who knows the facts but would fight to the last gasp in order to ensure stern justice being done to the murderers of our women an,d to the men who tortured our helpless prisoners. What, then should wc do? We'should have a stateinint drawn up, not coldly official, but himanly moving, signed by the officers who saw and endured these things. This document should be translated into German and put under the nose of every prisoner in England, that they may at least appreciate the contrast in the culture of the two countries. At present we are so pedantically correct in oiir treatment of these prisoners that whsn a' an earlier stage of the war I made the suggestion that we place a copy of 'J'Accuse' in every prison, it was refused on the ground that it was against international law to proselytise prisoners. This was about the time when Casement and the Germans were trying to starve the Irish prisoners into enlistment against Grefrt Britain.

"This statement should be served out broadcast in our munition shops and among our troops. The munition workers have many small venations to endure, and their nerves get sadly frayed, "hey need strong elemental emotions to carry them on. Let pictures be mado> of these and other incidents. Let them bn hung up in every shop. Let them be distributed thickly in the Sinn Fein distorts of Ireland and in the hotbeds of Socialism and 'Pacifism in England and Scotland. The Irishman has always been a man of chivalrous nature, and I cannot believe that even the wrongheaded Sinn Feiner has got down to the level of his allies of Prussia and Turkey. Let his eyes rest upon the work of his friends, and perhaps he will realise more clearly how he stands and the position which he has taken up in the world's fight for freedom. "The bestiality of the German nation has given us a driving power which we aie not using, and which would be very valuable in this stage of the war. Scattor the facts. Put them in red-hot fa'shion. Do not preach to the sulid South, who need no conversion, but spread the propaganda wherever there arc signs of enemy intrigues, on the Tyne, the Clyde'', in the Midlands, above nil in Ireland and in French Canada. Let us pay no attention to platitudinous bii>hops or gloomy deans, or any other superior people who preach against retaliation or whole-hearted warfare. We have to win, and we can only win by keeping up the spirit and resolution of o.'r own people."