THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, AUGUST 23, 1907. IMPERIAL UNITY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8517, 23 August 1907, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, AUGUST 23, 1907. IMPERIAL UNITY.

I Sir Rowland Blennerhasset has written for the Fortnightly Review an article which will be found suggestive by all who desire to "think Imperially." Taking the unification ! of Germany and Italy as his text, he shows that the British Empire cannot realise a true corporative existence unless its peoples learn, as those of Germany and Italy did, lessons of sacrifice and self-abnegation for a large patriotic ideal. "It was the great thinkers of Germany, the poets and philosophers of the country, who wfire the creators of the nation," says Sir Rowland. They formed the mind of the nation. The line began with Leibnitz, who in the seventeenth century turned to the traditions of the old Germanic Empire for inspiration and help in overcoming the disruptive tendencies of his day. Lessing emancipated his countrymen from "wooden orthodoxy" and from foreign ideals, Goethe and Schiller created a national literature, which gave to all German States an intellectual life in common, Kant established the ethical unity of the country on the sound principle of duty. Goethe said to Luden in a very dark hour of Germany's history:—"Let everyone, according to his talents, according to his teudencies. according to his po:icion, do his utmost to increase the culture and development of the people, to strengthen and wifen it on all sides, that the people may not lag behind other peoples, but may become competent for every great action when the day of its glory shall dawn." Germans followed this counsel, and took to heart the admonition, "to think first of their duties,, then of their rights." In precisely the same way Italy achieved national selfconsciousness through the ideals of its poets and thinkers, and the devotion to duty which they induced What the British Empire needs is thoroughly Imperial education, which will "bring home to the mirds of all subjects o6 the Crown the meaning a'id potentialities of the Empire." Unlike Germany and Italy,

;he British Empire "consists of bodies with little affinity to each j jther, some being purely industrial; others, exclusively agricultural; some influenced by centrifugal tendencies, which originating in commer- ] cial causes, are dangerous in conse- ] quence of the force which material considerations exercise on the actions of men. " To ensure permanent unity the people of the different parts must be taught to understand each other's interests, views, and feelings, to bear and forbear with one another, because of a great common intellectual ideal. Nothing can promote such an ideal more effectively than the study of national literature and national history.