CULT OF THUGGISM

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 February 1942, Page 4

CULT OF THUGGISM

PRUSSIAN PEOPLE’S RELIGION.

In August, 1917, Frederick Harrison wrote a warning to Britain, which, had it been heeded, could have saved Europe from tragedy, asserts a correspondent in a letter to the “Sunday Times.” After tracing the history ot Prussian militarism with its orgy of lust and robbery from the dismemberment of Denmark in 1864 to the rape of the eastern provinces of France, he continued: —“For 44 years he (Bismarck) and his successors have plotted, bullied, undermined their neighbours to gain the domination of the world. And, now that the civilised nations have joined to put down this infamy, they cry out that to make them disgorge some of their plunder is rank oppression. Some writers are so silly, so dishonest, as to believe this patent trickery. The Prussion people are of one mind with Kaiser and Army. In all the world's history no race has been so drilled, schooled, sermonised into a sort of inverted religion of hate, envy, jealousy, greed, cruelty, and arrogance. Man and woman, girl and boy, have been taught from childhood this inhuman vainglory and lust of power. It has grown to be their gospel. So the thugs of India used to organise assassination into a holy profession. Today we are in arms to put down thuggism in Europe, and the only way to cure thuggism is to make' the thug feel that it is too dangerous a cult to practise.” There is the diagnosis of the disease; there in a nutshell, its remedy.