FAITH IX ENGLISH IDEALS

Evening Star, Issue 16779, 6 July 1918, Page 3

FAITH IX ENGLISH IDEALS

-' VIEWS OF A CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY. Lord Lererhulrne. in conversation with a representative of the London ' Dailv . Chronicle,' declared that for the An-lo-Jsaxoii race to knuckle down to the Oer- ! man would be an eternal disgrace. After ; the possibility that the war ; rmgln last trom three to five years. Lord , j i-evernulme said : " I Cfm contemplate anv;timk - rather than the knucklintr down 'of the Anglo-Saxon race to the German. That would be eternal disgrace. We should . never survive it. It would be our ruin. , -My opinion is that finance will never stop ; us. I don't care how big our debt mav : oe._ we can shoulder it. . . . But lam !■ a little suspicious about banker-- Of course, it's only a guess. I don't know, but I cant help thinking a banker must have been talking to Lord Lansdowne betore lie wrote those letters. Bankers are as timid as rabbits. I have noticed that • rll my li:e. N"o sooner does a man fall ! ill than they fly to their ledgers, thinking he's going to die. to see how much he owes i them. They are almost all like that—extraordinarily timid. It's very curious. nut they seldom have the courage which is essential to enterprise of any magnitude. ; But finance v.i.n't stop us. _"• • - Our debt after finishing off the .Napoleonic menace was 830 millions.- It is calculated that our national wealth now jis tenfold what it was then. I sav it is a , hundredfold. Think of the discoveries j [which riave been made since Waterloo. We I i mine for coal at an infinitely greater depth. ! i Our modern mining for all minerals is a I | revolution. Then think of the revolution, j j equally great, in chemistry. transport,' j agriculture, marketing—in ' fact, every- , thin::. Then think of the present extent ]of the British Empire. Tenfold ! i sn v ■ the national wealth, at the verv least, is a hundredfold greater than it was in Napoleon's day. We shall shoulder our debt. : , " • • • Has the Russian smash affected the ideals with which England went to war? Has it modified my opinion as i regards German character? the answer is clear. _ The so-called peace emphasises . everything for which England went to war' land puts into flaming italics, if there are j such things, everything in German characi ter that is a menace to the happiness of ; mankind. Never before did I see so ! vividly how essential it is to defeat Germany. _ And never before did I feel so sharply m my very bones that to bow to Germany, to accept Germany's will, would mean our eternal disgrace'. Fight on? Or course we must fight on. Is there an r.nghshman who doubts it? Is there an Lng.shman, after this Russian peace, who wouid trust the Germans, who could brin* himseli to sit at a conference table with' them arranging the future of mankind? Don t think of frontiers. Don't think of territory. Think of it as the future of men, women and children. Would you arrange that future with the Germans of Brest? IS ever mind about Armenian massacres, Serbian massacres, Belgian massacres, L boat atrocities here, there and £,TO I™ : - d °, n,t k ° f thoSe "'"ago. but think simply of the Peace Treaty of Brest. Would yon negotiate the future of men, women, and children with the Ger man scoundrels who trapped and deluded and disarmed Russians to their ruin? j c' x' i '-, Any peace made with an undefeated Uermany-any peace—would undermine our Anglo-Saxon mentality for centuries. We should never be the same race aga.n. All our idealism would bo clouded over by the emasculating opporntTxu n the mate ™ li *\- We should be like the Germans. We should have a ba". man morality. We should walk the earth with the same sort of feeling that a cardsharper must have in his brain We should have failed to say the eternal No. We should have accepted dishonor—on what grounds? On the grounds of convenience. What an end for our race! \.t any rate, what a poison to hand vn to our children t Dishonor rather than sacrifice' Do you think our children would survive that. Isn't there a time whan a nation must say, and mean, Death rather than dishonor? Isn't dishonor more fatal than a loss of acres?