WAR.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 9812, 23 August 1897, Page 6

WAR.

P. Anderson Graham, in the New Beview. Let it be granted that no sane man would advocate war for its own sake : that no man of sense—to say nothing of justice—would add hie mite of influence to justify anything in the nature of aggression or mere wanton lust of blood. War is not desirable for its own sake. But, on the other hand, to be too much afraid of war is to err grossly in the opposite direction. And it would be a still grosser error to trust too meekly to Arbitration. You may settle by that method any dispute which is small, definite, and self-contained ; but great struggles must ever be innate in the rivalry of nations, and the nominal .quarrel is seldom the real one. If a Great Power were to believe that its Colonial Empire might be enlarged and its commerce extended by crippling Great Britain, to submit to Arbitration the easily found pretext for dispute would be only a mockery of forms. And that the occasion may arrive soon is plain to any student of foreign public opinion. The nations are like hives of bees ready to swarm, aud they envy Britain the vast territories in South Africa, in India, in Australia, where for centuries to come she has made room for her children. To yield them up would be a crime. The British Islands with their teeming population, their factories, and their workshops, could not now exist as a community by itself \our Little Englander propounds a theory that spells want, ruin, and beggary.