HISTORY'S HEROES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 283, 30 November 1933, Page 8

HISTORY'S HEROES.

FRAUDS AND SHAMS. SCIENTIST PEER'S ATTACK. LORD RAGLAN'S OUTBURST. Lord Kagian, the scientist peer, who recently startled the Briti«>i Association by saying Norman pedigrees were frauds, took a running kick at the '"heroes" of history recently. At the Society of Friends' peaceful meeting house in London he declared war on great names. He petrified an audience of spectacled, elderly women by saying; "Scotch children are taught that that atrocious ruffian, William Wallace, was a chivalrous hero. False teaching is to be deplored. We, shall have to revise religious teaching since it holds up to the young, as patterns of morality, such monsters of cruelty as Moses, Joshua, Samuel and David, whose atrocities exceed anything that was alleged against our enemies in the last war. "The circumstances of the case in the two American Civil Wars were very It therefore follows that either George Washington or Abraham Lincoln was one of the greatest villains in history. You can take your choice which." The Gamut. Lord Raglan ran through the gamut of history, religion, education, and international politics, gaily knocking the ninepins over as "shams." Of education ho said: "Our upper classes arc, as a rule, superior because they are better brought up; where they are not better brought up they are not superior. We are brought up to believe that an Englishman is superior by nature to a Frenchman, and that a* European is naturally superior to an Asiatic. These are mischievous falsehoods. The Red Indian is still thought to be a funny man with feathers in his hair. Sueli teaching tends to leave in the child's mind an impression of unbridgeable chasms. The Oriental is no more inscrutable than the grocer; the savage is certainly less childlike than the Test match enthusiast."

What of world politics? Lord Raglan went on:—"There arc sonic pacifists who propose to hand over all armaments to the League of Nations. It would ho impossible for the League to function unless it included the- whole world. Java's Right. "Once the world was included, then Java, with its population of thirty-five million, would be entitled to the same representation at Geneva as England. India and China might then combine and gain control of the League. They could then abolish Western civilisation and abolish Christianity, "I challenge anyone to produce a case where armaments have caused a war or lack of armaments has prevented a war. "Disarmament, as proposed by the pacifists and politicians, is a quack remedy for the disease of war. Disarmament will come when warmindedness has disappeared, and not before."