Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. FRIDAY, JUNE 18, 1909. UNJUSTIFIED JEREMIAHS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XXIX, Issue 7825, 18 June 1909, Page 2

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. FRIDAY, JUNE 18, 1909. UNJUSTIFIED JEREMIAHS.

Some sad and solemn things have lately been said m the Old World m connection with gay and even festive events; for instance, the Imperial Press Conference, at which Lord Rosebery and other persons of light and leading have been doing their best to add to the gravity of nations with rhetorical forecasts of what they are pleased to call the re-barbarisation of Europe. For justification of these prophecies of evil those wise men point to the armies and navies which, like embattled thunder clouds from opposite quarters of the sky, are now increasingly confronting each other ominously i throughout the world. The facts about ! the armies and navies are plain enough, but the general deduction that their existence almost inevitably involves an international cataclysm is, to say the least of it, somewhat strange, regarded'as the result of reasoning processes m the minds of statesmen who are, presumably, not ignorant of history. The enormous armaments that now exist m the world are beyond doubt very portentous and very deplorable objects m themselves; they surely prove that much is out of joint m the international relationships of mankind, and surely also thai there must be much misgovernment, much unwisdom, and much social and economic injustice m the separate and individual nations, the flower of whose manhood and the bulk of whose wealth are absorbed m the maintenance of battalions and battleships. All this proves the prevalence of a cosmopolitan militant madness or mad militancy. Yet, even so, there are also certain gradually increasing signs that the world is, however' slowly, working itself free of this virulent fever or deep-seated delirium. It is not the first time it has stood m a similar situation, whence it has emerged, conquering and to conquer, along the lines of true civilisation. It is this historic fact which makes the funereal forecasts of Lord Rosebery and his brethren so passing strange m the mouths of such men, who, it must be assumed, cannot' be unfamiliar with history, or at least not obtusely ignorant of great historic conditions that prevailed not so very long before some of them were born. Lord Rosebery himself was born m April, 1847, and up to within about a quarter of a century of, that date all Europe had been for fully a quarter of a century deafened with the thunder and drenched m the blood of a hundred battles. In the words of Mr Robert Mackenzie, a painstaking, trustworthy and too-little-read' historian, who died m the year 1881: "At the opening of the nineteenth century all Europe was occupied with war. The European people then numbered one hundred and seventy millions, and of these four millions were set apart, by their own choice or,? the decree of their Governments, to the business of fighting. They were withdrawn from the occupations of peace, and maintained at enormous cost, expressly to harm their fellow-men. The interests of peace withered m the storm; the energies of all nations, the fruits of all industries, were poured forth m the effort to destroy. Prom (the utmost. north to the shores of the Mediterranean, from the confines of Asia to the Atlantic, men toiled to burn each other's cities, to waste each other's fields, to destroy each other's lives. In some lands there was heard the shout of victory, m some the wail of defeat. In all lands the ruinous waste of war had produced bitter poverty; grief and fear were m every home. This had lasted already for ten years, and was yet to last for fifteen years more. It was not to cease till millions of men had perished." Now, all this is horrible and deplorable m the last degree; and yet it did not lead to the re-barbarisation of Europe. Indeed, the century whose first quarter was surcharged with the luridness, and crowded with the scenes, of Pandemonium, has been justly called the Wonderful Century by one of ;its most wonderful sons—Alfred Russel _ Wallace. It witnessed mojno industrial progress than had been seen by the world during the preceding thousand years: the same may be said lof science and government and of colonisation: m the last category, witness, the expansion within Canada and the United States of America and the settlement of Australia and New Zealand. We hope, and encourage ourselves to believe, that Europe will be saved from what appear to be more or less imminent international conflicts; but even if wars should take place, it is not thinkable that they must necessarily end m the hopeless ruin and combustion anticipated by Lord Rosebory and his sad-eyed friends —that brotherhood of unjustified Jeremiahs.