The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED: The Evening News, Morning News, and The Eco. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 1909. UNIVERSAL PEACE.

Auckland Star, Volume XL, Issue 43, 19 February 1909, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED: The Evening News, Morning News, and The Eco.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 1909. UNIVERSAL PEACE.

for the cause that laoMe aititteme*), Tor the wrong that niOs raiiettnat. Tor the future to the tfistaac* And tht good that tee earn ma.

A prominent place is allotted in the King's Speech at the opening of the British Parliament to the continued maintenance of peace, and the better understanding with Germany which is hoped for as a result of the recent visit of King Edward and the Queen to that country. The Berlin Press lays emphasis ' upon these utterances, and declares that "King Edward's visit is having better political effects than anticipated in Germany; the ice has been broken, and the period of angry suspicion and discussion is past." Every lover of peace and of humanity will share in the desire that these sentiments may materialise in some practical movement towards disarmament, for the strain induced by suspicion and misunderstanding between these two great nations (sprung from a common ancestry), is becoming •unbearable. In Germany the growth of naval and military expenditure has resulted in an addition of £100,000,000 to the national debt in five years, and proposals are under consideration which will add another £22,000,000 a year to the na> tional taxation, in order to maintain a system, which, by its menace, compels other nations to follow an evil example. The acceptance of the two-Power standard for the British navy involves the commencement of five or six Dreadnoughts next year, at a cost of £12,000,000, spread over two years, in order to keep pace with the German building programme. The manning and maintenance of these ships will further strain the resources of Imperial finance, which has undertaken large responsibilities on account of Old Age Pensions and other urgently-needed Home reforms. Even the United States, hitherto free from the military spirit, has been stirred into action, and a proposal is now before Congress to supplement its heavy naval expenditure by the creation of a volunteer army of two million men. These are not conditions that hold out much prospect of an early adoption of the principles of the Peace Society. The last International Conference at The Hague utterly failed in it 3 efforts to secure even a moderate modification of the war budgets of the nations that were represented at the gathering, Nevertheless, tbe permanent existence of the Conference as an international in.sti tution contains an.element of hopefulness, and there are other influences at work which slowly but surely tend towards the removal of racial misunderstandings and the growth of international amity. Ofttimes one can see a bright light across a darker shadow than that in which one is standing, but one can hardly deny the existence of the shadow. The shadow of a coming crisis, or, at least, of a possible crisis, will not be dissipated by the optimistic faith of the few-r-or is it the many ?-r=:\vho see Peace as the chief foundation of an ultijnate reasoned, and.' scientific progress towards Utopia. It is a .commonplace that human advancement is not a vertical ascent, but a zigzag, a. progression that includes retrogression. The path is slippery, and the optimist who allows for no falls, and the pessimist, who sees all falls, and no up-, ward movement, are probably both e q u AUy n .error. We believe, that uajh versa! peace between the 'white Xfces,

is at least as certain to come in its time as Halley*s comet, or a remote eclipse of the sun. But it may be after an Aceldama of bloodshed—after horrors past the imagination to conceive, after decades of wasteful ruin and insensate suffering. The influences we allude to may at present be social rather than political; informal rather than official; -widely individual rather than rigidly collective; but they are clearly a sign of the times as any fact of industry, of science, of general progress. And nothing has brought its reality more effectively into view than the sequel to the Italian earthquake. Never, perhaps, in the history of the world, has there been such a breaking down of all national barriers, and such aD implicit recognition of the claims of a common humanity. Hundreds of thousands of pounds have flowed into Rome from London, from Paris, from New York, from Berlin, from St. Petersburg. Miss Smith, of Chicago, has stripped her wardrobe of superfluities as Teadily as Frau Spitzeriberger, of Warsaw, or Madame Tournevis, of Rouen, to clothe the shivering refugees of Messina in apparel that is none the less warming because it may be ironically "in the fashion." That disaster is regarded not as ah Italian disaster, as something localised in the centre of Southern Europe, but as something of world-wide appeal.

People are slow to appreciate a fact, that partakes of the abstract, no matter how important, how convincing, how illuminative. It is easy to recog-jise the progress in a decade in electricity; it is easy to be optimistically prophetic about the role of the aeroplane; but it is somehow in human nature to distrust anything like the same optimism when we come to questions of social evolution. And yet is it reasonable to suppose that these very material changes themselves— these feats of distance-Dridging, of time annihilation, of victories over every hostile phenomenon of nature—can come without a. corresponding development in the social scheme? We look not only to theory lor a judgment on the social changes to come; we take the evidence of our senses as to the marvellous changes that a single decade has Brought about. Travellers on the Continent of Europe to-day, provided that they travel sympathetically, open-mindedly, and with some knowledge of the language and outer customs of the people whom they visit, find less inner difference between the citizens of any capital in Western Europe and those of London than twenty years ago, they would have found between the people of London and those of Leeds.

A French comic .paper the other day humorously reflected this spirit in a caricature which represented a very stiff young Englishman and his Ifrenca friend. "Don't you think I should almost pass for a Frenchman!" asks M.l' Anglais. " Certainly, if you were a little more positively English," waa the quick reply. Of course this was an exaggeration; but it is no exaggeration to say that there are numbers of Frenchmen, of Germans, of Italians to-day who will beat the Englishman on his own ground of looking English. Indeed, local types, pronouncedly national types, have suffered such a. numerical decline, in the past few years that it is fair to say that a Frenchman who looks exclusively French, or a Ger- ' man who looks exclusively German is rapidly passing into a small minority. And wiat is there strange in this when we consider that day-trlppers are as readily interchanged between Paris and London to-day as between London and Brighton ten years ago!

And above and beyond all questions of assimilation of types by intercourse, there is the assimilation through a 00L ' lateral movement towards increased democracy. What Rip van Winkle from ; the past of Paris would recognise the Gay City in possession, so far as the shops and places of business are concerned, of an English Sunday? And that was not brought about by Sabbatarians, :or even by the most broadly religious of ] people, but by a Labour party which held out for one day's rest in seven, and chose Sunday for that day. In a hundred directions the tendency of democracy is to create resemblances, to multiply common customs, to remove the local distinctions bred of localised individualism. The visitor from Moscow—even Moscow —has little to surprise him in the streets of London or Berlin; and the green English traveller, basinjj his expectations on the fairy-tales of a day of exclusive nationalism, is disappointed continually by the dead level on the. surface of a world-wide social life. The traveller has to go from the beaten track to get away from the levelling influence of electric trams, or to discover remnants of national costume or conspicuous, divergences from modes of life with which the Englishman is familiar in his own country. The stress of modern existence has reproduced itself in such similar forms in diverse places that it is hardly wonderful that the industrial conditions should have proved a more potent social influence than the mere matter of locality.

To the man of fair imagination the times are viewed in the light of tendencies as well as of accomplished facts; and it is from that point of view, we think, that the idea of growth towards an international unity is most impressive. If so much has happened in ten or twenty years,, what will be. the state of the world at the end of another fifty? ; We believe it will be changed so completely that a sincere prophet would have to face much ridicule if- he attempted to state his forecast in terms of material measurement. Language will probably be still a, bar; but we doubt whether t-Uere will be any more differences between Western Europeans than there will be between individuals of the same race. The internation may be far off from the political point of view, but from the social point of view we believe it, is faj nearer to, realisation than most people supsp'tf