KEEP THE HATE FIRES BURNING.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVIII, Issue 36, 10 February 1917, Page 19

KEEP THE HATE FIRES BURNING.

"J TRIUMPH OF CAXT." "Cant: An Essay on English Hypocrisy," is the title of a special article published iv the Government-controlled "Lokal Anzeiger" by Dr. A. yon Wilke. Xt is one of the periodical effusions in*pired by the German Press Bureau for tlie purpose of keeping the hate fires • burning. Dr. yon Wilke is the proprietor of a Berlin news agency called the-"Neu Ucsellschaftliche Correspondency." lie enjoys intimate associations in official and Court circles, and his liter-ry productions are circulated to scores of newspapers throughout the country. These axe some of his gems of wisdom: "We have not incorporated the word 'cant' in our German vocabulary because Mother Nature has fortunately not endowed us -with any organ for giving vent to the particular emotions which the term expresses. But we have borrowed another word from our dear Anglo-Sa.x.on cousin—the word 'bluff'—with the retriction that we do not allow ourselves to be 'bluffed' when they try to lecture us on morality and immorality. It is then that we think of their 'cant,' and bestow upon all their clap-trap only the ehoulder-shrug of indifference and contempt. WHAT CANT IS. "Cant, for one thing, is the overcrowded state of all London churches on Sundays. It is cant which ostraciaes from the social invitation list young men who are regularly seen in church, while in close proximity to the church quarter, where the rich live, poverty and wretchedness reign such as no other European metropolis knows. "From childhood up cant is instilled into the children of England and, if necessary, pounded into them. The admonitions they hear begin, as I can testify from experience, net so often with 'You may never do' as with "You may jiever say.' Everything always proceeds from the theory that ene may do thing as long as it does not leak out. "Cant is not only the hall-mark of private life in England but runs like a red thread through the -ivh-ole of English politics. It was cant which Gladstone inToked in the name of humanity against the so-called Armenian atrocities, although no State in history ever suppressed rebellions with such terrible cruelty as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. "SHOCKING." "The English have a word of their own that they let fall from their lips in accents of extreme indignation, amid grinding of teeth, every time cant comes into its own —i.e., whenever outward appearances (and outward only) are imperilled. It is the word 'shocking.' ' Shocking' is whatever runs counter to cant. Cant regulates the existence of 'the cultured Englishman in every second of bis life, from the cradle to the grave. It has been the leitmotif of English politics from time immemorial. It was cant which inspired the English to set up their tale of woe about the fictitious maltreatment of the peaceable inhabitants of Belgium —a dirge they were chanting at the very moment they were ■boasting that their half-civilised Indian troop 3 would soon be sitting on the benches of the Kaiser's park in Potsdam. " SUBMARINE CANT." " It is also nothing but cant which induces the English to assail our submarine warfare as barbarous. They only r«gret that they -themselves neglected the opporunity of equipping , their fleet with submarines in consequence of "the incapacity of Winston Churchill.

" The English motto, • Right or Wrong, My Country,' deserves so to be construed as to mean that everything opposed to England's interests is wrong. . But here political cant comes in and exemplifies that such a, thing is not only wrong but immortal. Anything that can injure ! England is immoral from the very beginning. HUNS. " It remained for the English Press, in (accordance with the time-tried national cant tradition, to invent for us the graceful epithet of ' Huns.' The English, who have mobilised the black and yellow races against us, have the lamentable effrontery to place our good-natured Pomeranians and the honest lada of Brandenburg on a level with the hordes of Attila. That is a triumph of political cant."