Y.W.C.A.

Evening Star, Issue 16197, 19 August 1916, Page 1

Y.W.C.A.

Following the annual meeting of the association, the usual board meeting was held on Wednesday, the principal business being the election of officers. Mrs Herbert W llson was re-elected president, with Mrs W. H. Duke and Mas Southey vice-presi-dents, Miss Baig secretary, and Miss Little treasurer. The conveners of the various committees wexe re-elected. Several Bible study circles are held regularly. The classes are in the second term of the session. The physical culture and first aid are most popular, over 250 students being enrolled, in connection with the St. John Ambulance Association. The membership is increasing and the work progressing generally. Much preparatioa is being done on behalf of the girls* department, pending the arrival of the new secretary, specially trained In girls' work. For the initeraesooialtion contests (some entries are in progress. It was mentioned that Miss A. M. Bentham, M.A., recently acting general secretary for Bunedin, and who went to Sydney to attend, the training school, ha* been appointed assistant general secretary for tho Melbourne AnsoCJation. ...

The-cabled epitome, of Mr Bonar Laws address to the special Mr Bonar Law conference of the Na,and tionalist Union AssociaMr Asqulth In tion, which appeared, in Double Harness, our-columns on the llth inst-, possesses more than usual interest. The most conspicuous feature of it is the evidence it furnishes of th& triumph of national sentiment over Party interests. In dealing with the Irish Problem the erstwhile Loader of tha Conservative party stated that "there were even more important than "maintaining party union." If this utterance awakens an echo in the breasts of hiding politicians of .all schools, the appalling sacrifices of the -war will not be without some compensations in the internal government of Great Britain as well as in the liberation of Europe from a military tyranny.

■.But ivb would refer particularly at thus time to that part of Mr Bonar Law's speech which considers the question of the post-war trade of the Empire. "The war," ho said, "had caused an overI' whelming majority in the country to "feel that never again should German V enemies be .allowed to nse our markets "as before the war." There is not the slightest degree of over-statement here. Tho prevalence of this sentiment is due chiefly to the universal abhorrencw whioh the ambition of Germany and the means adopted to realise it have existed. It goes without saying that in the majority ot cases the resolution to boycott German goods does not spring- from any scientific calculation of economic consequences. Commonly the great mass of the people of any country do not reason themselves into any belief, but rather feel themselves into it. Cheap rationalists wax very sarcastic over the exaltation of sentiment into the seat of authority. They seem impervious to the lesson which every page of history teaches, that the heart' plays a greater part than tho head in moulding the destinies of nations. Often, indeed, the promptings of intuition turn out to be more reliable than the elaborate and cold syllogisms of the reason. We are therefore not disposed to brash aside as negligible the sentiment of hostility to the renewal of trade relations with Germany, even where the sentiment has not consciously been evolved out of logical analysis. We find ourselves entertaining much sympathy with the Parliament of Belgium, which has recently passed a law (to become operative on the return of peace) providing that it shall bo a penal offence for a German to set foot on Belgian, soil.

We do, however, deprecate the unconditional capitulation of reason to sentiment in matters relating to the post-war fiscal relations with Germany. Statesmanship will reveal itself certainly not in pouring contempt upon the sentiment which clamors p tan punishment of the Hun, hut it will in .guiding that sentiment into channels which will secure such punishment without bringing disaster upon the British Empire. The thing that ought to bo recognised at once by all schools of political thought is that the righteous indignation of all just men against the unscrupulous military and commercial aims and methods of the Hohenzollern dynasty must have an outlet in commercial as well as military chastisement. If the position were universally accepted, the settlement of the post-war fiscal policy would bo attended with little of the warping passion of party politics. The desideratum is that all fiscal doctrines traditionally associated with one party of the State or another shall bo thrust into the background in order that an entirely new problem may be faced by an entirely unbiased mind. Men must not come to its solution with a theory to vindicate—with a time-honored belief to uphold. The relations of the British Empire with Germany in the years following the conclusion of peace must bo determined not by the mind of Ricliard Cobden nor by the mind of Joseph Chamberlain, but by minds that are furnished with the lore of this terrible war. As Mr Robert Blatchford has stated, those who essay the task of establishing the Empire's future fiscal policy must not allow themselves to forget that Cobden is dead and that his adversaries are dead. British men of to-day are not going to permit the light which this world conflagration has offered for redressing the relations of nations to each other to be dungeoned up in the cranium of a Cobden or any other great man of the Past. The Past, with its lessons, must not be spurned; but it affords no stable anchorage for a time more remarkable for its dissimilarities than its similarities with ages gone by.

If what we have said be the truth, there is ground for much satisfaction in the recent deliverance of Mr Asquith concerning the attitude of himself and his associates towards the fiscal relations with Germany. He, the Freetrade leader of a political party, cherishing the memory of honorable and triumphant struggles for Freetrade, has received the public commendation of Mr Bonar Law, the antiFreetrade leader of a political party cherishing memories of strenuous, although unavailing, struggles for preferential trade within the Empire. The commendation has arisen out of tho expressed resolution of the Prime Minister to have an impartial investigation made into the whole subject of the Empire's trade relations, with a view to the evolution of a policy suitable to the circumstances created bv Prussian militarism. Surely here we have a happy augury for more co-operation and less bitter partisanship between rival politicians.

To find Mr Bonar Law -willing to disrupt his party, with its traditional Unionism, rather than let slip an opportunity for harmonising Ireland, and to find Mr Asquith willing to abate his lifelong rigorous allegiance to Freetrade principle rather than permit Germany unhindered scope for the rehabilitation of her commerce—these things brighten the ontlook for the future.