TUESDAY, OCTOBER 19, 1888.

Auckland Star, Volume XVII, Issue 246, 19 October 1886, Page 2

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 19, 1888.

The state of affairs in Europe must cause grave apprehension to all who are interested in tlio preservation o' peace. The Great Powers of that continent, armed to the teeth, are watching each other in a state of nervous tension, which an accident may at any moment strain beyond the hope of recovery Thus will arise a war whose issues none can foresee—whose extent none can anticipate. It is of course difficult for us who are at a distance from the scene of action to divine the real motives influencing the minds of the stage managers iv this great drama. Glibly as we may talk about them, what they mean is not shown to the world at large. But certainly to ordinary honesty and intelligence the questions involved do not seem such as to justify the wholesale suffering and ruin which must result should what we dread take place and the terrible machinery of modern war be set in motion. Is it right or just that a considerable portion of the civilised world should be exposed to the misery of an armed occupation because Kussia deems it essential to her advancement that she should secure possession of Constantinople and control the entrance to the Black Sea ? Yet this seems really the ultimate reason of the dark and threatening aspect of European politics. Of course there are many side issues involved. The feverish though latent jealousy which exists on the part of France and Germany; the difficulties arising from the dual constitution of the Austrian Empire, with its half-blended elements of discord ; the vast ambition of Germany, developed under the influence of the great statesman who at present holds the reins ; and above all, perhaps, the weakness of the Ottoman power;— all these things doubtless contribute towards bringing about the present crisis. But the main factor in the great question appears to be the insatiable hunger of Kussia for something which she does not possess. It is almost certain that this will culminate—if not immediately, within a few years—in an outbreak of tremendous and farreaching consequence. Now we are not amongst those who imagine that war will ever entirely

cease on the earth. The whole history of the past shows how futile such a hope must be. But at the same timo we are strongly of opinion that wars should be narrowed within the smallest possible compass. Is it right that the mere whim or caprice or earth hunger of kings or statesmen should be a sufficient ground for embarking on so dread an enterprise ? The game may seem aud doubtless is a great one. But let us strip the disguise off the pieces on this magnificent chess-board and what do we find ? Underlying each there is the same grim figure. It is but death in masquerade. Those who suffer, moreover, are not the men who set the pieces in motion, and preside over . the great tactical or strategical evolutions which result in the carnage of battle and the armed occupation of a country. Manage it as we may, it is the poor and the helpless who are most deeply involved.

It is they who bear the brunt; they who lose their little means of living they whose blood enriches as a ghastly fertiliser the fields of their native land. Hear what Carlyle says : " What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the net purport and upshot of war 1 To my own knowledge, for example, there dwell and toil in the British village of Dumdrudge, usually some five hundred souls. From these by certain ' natural enemies ' of the French, there are successively selected, during the French war, say thirty able-bodied men. Dumdrudge, at her own expense, has suckled and nursed them ; she has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to manhood, and even trained them to' crafts, so that one can weave, another build, another : hammer, and the weakest can stand j under thirty stone avoirdupois. Never- j theless, amid much weeping and swear- j ing, they are selected; all dressed in red ; and shipped away at the public i charge some two thousand miles, or,

say, only to the south of Spain, and fed there till wanted. And now to that same spot in the south of Spain are thirty similar French artisans, from a French Dumdrudge, in like manner wending, till at length, after infinite cffoi_'t, the two parties conic ii»to actual juxtaposition, and thirty stand fronting thirty, each with a gun in.his hand. Straightway the word ' Fire 'is given, And they blow the souls out of one another, and in place of sixty brisk, Vneful craftsmen, the w'drld has sixty dead carcases which it must bury and anon shed tears it'oi'. Had tliese men any quarrel 1 Busy as the devil is, Hot the smallest! They lived far enough apart 5 were the en ti rest strangers; iiity, in so wide a universe, there was even unconsciously by commerce some mutual helpfulness between them. How, then? Simpleton! their Governors had fallen out, and instead of shooting one another, had the cunning to make these poor blockheads shoot."

Cri'iphic aiVd weighty as are these words, they arc but typical. We must multiply our Dumdrudge a thousand fold, ere we can picture the full extent of the honors incident to war. Nay, we must go farther. We must add the ruined homesteads and smoking cottages ; tho roof-trco that shall never again cover the light of home, the trampled fields and ungaru'ored crops; tlio disease and destitution that arise Wherever the foot of war treads. And When we have done all this, the imagination fails to conceive in their full reality the suffering, and loss and ruin that are'entailed by war, on those who aro too feeble or too iiisignilicant to escape from its far-reaching and baneful influence. Well, then, may our hearts stand still in sympathetic, ahum as we note the war cloud growing denser, and hear, nearer and nearer, tho sound 'of preparation for tho coming light. After all, what a clumsy contrivance it is for the settlement of national differences. How unworthy of our boasted civilization, and its vaunted advancement. Jt is the duty of every one to enforce this thought by all means in his power, and so, even in a small degree, prepare the way for what Tennyson grandly calls, '' The Parliament of man, the federation of the world," in which the common sense of most may hold a fretful realm in awe. Meanwhile, for the presont, we trust that the storm may yet be averted, and the better counsels of peace prevail.