The Evening Star. SATURDAY, AUGUST 19, 1916.

Evening Star, Issue 16197, 19 August 1916, Page 6

The Evening Star. SATURDAY, AUGUST 19, 1916.

It is fitting that a week which, locally,

ends amid the cheers More Exalted of oxtr own citizens Than Ever. as- thev watched somo

1,200 of the youth and manhood of the Dominion—who have offered their services and lives, and have been trained to take their share in the great Armageddon now being fought ten thousand miles and moro away—march through their streets should, on the Imperial and larger side, end with words of assured confidence and unalterable faith from the one man most qualified to speak them. Mr Lloyd George has -never at any time—not erven when to tho superficial it seemed most threatening—had the faintest doubt of tho outcome of the great conflict, provided the nation were but loyal to tho highest, and therefore tho best, of its national traditions. For a7~ speech that is said to have aroused extraordinary scenes of fervor the cabled summary is ridiculously brief, consisting as it does of little more than detached and isolated phrases. But it calls for no exceptional imaginative effort either to picture the scene or to "fill in" the gaps that are left open. The Secretary of War has again struck the right note, and once more reaffirmed the old faiths with all his wonted ardor. The class of critic who is content, on reading such declarations, to say that the Minister has told us nothing new simply proclaims his own mental and moral inability to get into touch with those finer thoughts and more glorious ideals that are now thrilling and throbbing through the hearts of loyal men and women the Empire over. The mart who regards this wax from the standpoint of commercialism, or as a something that might be arranged by conference and compromise, has long since passed into the outer darkness. Our Empire and. its Allies will never win through if their peoples are actuated and dominated by no other objects than those which regard the war as a regrettable occurrence out of which it is our primary duty to extract the best material bargain we can. Not on these lines has the British Empire become what it was ■ and is, and not on any such sordid and unutterably inefficient basis can it emerge triumphant and begin anew. Nor, wo may incidentally remark, would an Empire and 'people go inspired deserve- to win. If there are in England and. elsewhere those who regard the coming of the end of the war as little more than the signal for tho resumption, of business and pleasure on the old lines, then it will be better for them and better for the world that they shall not win, "Our honor is "not dead, our might is unbroken, our "ideals remain; we are more alive, more

■*' potent, animated with a deeper pur"posi>, more exalted than ever," says" Mr Lloyd But-, more than lihese, it is imperative after the war .that there should be upon the part of the "victors .the most absolute and -whole-souled recognition of tho fact thatx man does- not live by bread alone. It is, perhaps, a-hard saying, but-of its truth all right-thinking men and -women ai-e convinced. After the -war tho person, male or female, -who lives for bread and bread only should find the parasitic life not only prodigiously hard to live, but supremely uncomfortable. It would ba ten thousand, times ten thousand better that victory had never been if, as a people, we are to come forth from the Sery furnace as gross ass when we first entered it. Yet we know, to our shame, that there- are those who, without shame, do contemplate some such return—people to whom tho war is a " nuisance " And cm inconvenience," because, forsooth, it interferes with their pleasures, "' There is much, more intelligence," says Mr H. G. Wells, "concentrated upon the manufao- " ture of cigarettes or hairpins tlian upon " the establishment of a permanent- world "peace."' Surely, not for these, nor such as these, have millions shed their blood, and yet other millions been doomed to live tho balance of their span on earth maimed and blind. We turn in thought to the enemy, and we ask t What of him? But can the reflection be regarded as wholly satisfying that Germany on the moral side has long since sunk to the lowest depths and wallowed in the sty of Epicurus beyond anything that England has dreamed or dared.? We cannot think so, though the fact that this world-war was bom of the wild desires of a fow debased minds, which, for a generation, taught their people that the sword not God, and might not right, were the final arbiters between nations, has undoubtedly enabled -us to fight, and to determine to continue to fight, in the unquenchable faith that our cause is that of Justice and Eighteousness. When, we know, as we do, that the German Kaiser is But the' mouthpiece of the German people—that his admonitions, vaunftngs, and appeals reflect not alone his own diseased imaginings, but those of his subjects, east and west, north and south—there remains nothing for the rest of civilised-'mankind to do but (in

Germans." "So long as Germany con-'] "iinuea under the influence of a cruel '""lust of ipowfer," said Mr Henderson, then President of the Board of Education, "it use to talk to me gof peace." Good men and good women the Empire over daTe not talk of peace, save as some far off Divine event, towards which, the nations, in sore travail, are slowly but inexorably moving. They must wait and work "in patience and prayer. It is to prayer that the author of the war is said to have advised his people to turn their minds. Well, tho prayers of the righteous availeth much j but in what category must he be placed who, when the moment of decision l came to him, did not command " let there be peace," but " let there be war"? There are worse things even than the speaking of guns, though every voice therefrom spells death and destruction. If, of all crimes 'gainst God andi Christ and Man, The Sin of Sins committed on. this*-star Be 'his, who, lust-inflamed and drunk "with power, Said on that August morn :• "Let there be '■ war!"

If that be so, may not--the cannon speak With other voice thin Satan s—the

sublime, Calm voice of Nemesis— and every gun Thunder God's imprecation on that crime? At this moment of writing, and for many past months, the guns have been speaking in terms of death on the Somme, on the Dniester, and on tho Isonzo, and they mast continue so to speak, not because they demand that the nations and peoples of the earth shall ,pay tribute to them, but because they are the heralds of that deeper and more exalted purpose which still halts upon the threshold.