The Evening Star THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1918.

Evening Star, Issue 16837, 12 September 1918, Page 4

The Evening Star THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1918.

Atteb more than four years of sanguinary war. aft or a death roll in The World in battle of over eight milChaos, lions, a wounded, captured, or missing roll of 15 millions ';u;d a roll of other unknown millions among the non-combatants of the peoples ot the ravaged countries, it is still possible for men in all parts of the world to compile tho authentic records such as j are being scattered broadcast day by day. j The agony and the horror, of the battlefield and the daily slaughter and maiming o! tho world's youth are but part, and possibly not the most awful part, of the ! seemingly endless and well-nigh universal tragedy in which mankind is involved. Beneath that deep horn of the clash of contending armies there is the even more fearful deep ot foul outrage and nameless evil arising out of the fierce havoc in which there is neither profit nor honor nor j glory, but a mere wantonness of crime and bestiality, wherein what were once men and women are as loathsomely and helplessly entaugled as the monsters of the primeval slime. This, and infinitely more than this, is happening in the presence and with the knowledge of those whose boast it has been that they are members of a civilisation than which there has been none higher and none nobler. It is not imperative that we should dwell upon the prospect. It must sufrico that It exists, that we as members of a common humanity are part and parcel thereof, and that from participation in its consequences—be these what they may, and whether we recognise them or not —we cannot hope to escape. Even the dullest and least moved can no longer plead inability to understand what the world's statesmen and thinkers mean, and have long meant, by insisting that this present war is not a war for territory or material gain, but a war of principles, w r ho?e champions and advocates must serve and fight either under the banner of Odin or of Christ. The issue is of moment even to the people of prosperous New Zealand, who from the first have been spared personal knowledge of and contact with the more lurid and ghastly aspects of war. It is our interest to know that we as a people are as much concerned in the fearful knowledge that the innocent men and women of Armenia have been massacred out of existence, that Serbia and Montenegro have , practically ceased to exist, and that porj trons of the most thickly populated parts ' of European Russia are given over to asI sasination. outrage, and villainy unspeakable as we are to know that the armies of i the Allies continue driving back the hosts of the barbarian invader. Each alike springs from a common cause. When the German War Lords decided that solemn treaties were but " scraps of paper " and that international law had ceased to exist, they then and there made probable and permissible the hideous crimes on land and sea that ever since, have sickened and confounded humanity. The sack of Belgium, the murder of Miss Cavell, the wiping out of Serbia and Montenegro, the reign of terror in Russia, spring from the one root —Prussianism. The sword having been deliberately chosen as the supreme arbiter, it was inevitable that wherever the sword successfully established itself, and to that extent justified the claims asserted on it 3 behalf, its example would be followed by the credulous and innately evil. Bolshevism, being unable to enforce its crude Millennianism upon universal mankind, and having no trained army such as Germany had wherewith to convert the world to its faith, naturally and inevitably took to murder. But between Prussianism and Bolshevism the difference is merely one of degree, not of kind. Each is of "Cerberus and blackest midnight born," and each i 3 the enemy of all that tho race, in its progress from chaos to Christianity, has come to regard as alone worthy of rational humanity. The Austrian Propaganda Department, wo are advised, has issued an official document which, among other things, contains what is termed a cynical confession to the effect that the Central Powers had used Lenin as their agent to divide Russia, dissolve her political institutions, and destroy her army. The department has reason to feel proud of the success ot its intent. Never since Satan and his angels were cast forth from heaven was so foul a brood let loose upon mankind as that with which the Central ■ Powers crowned their conspiracy against its continued life and happiness. Nor could a mare apt pupil be found than Lenin. No obstacle to Austro-German desires was likely from that quarter. Tho man who had given some of tlho richest provinces of Russia into the keeping of Germany, who had granted her priority of claim on Russian raw materials, who had dissolved its Constituent Assembly by sheer brut© force, who lias brought that once mighty empire to a condition of indescribable confusion, horror, and crime, and who has now signed a treaty with Germany to fight the Entente forces, has been but acting after the manner of his kind, and once again making apparent the many-century-old truth that tyranny is tho prerogative of no one class or section, but flourishes alike in the hearts of tho democrat and the autocrat. All of which means that the nations are far from the end of tfoeix eore travail. The destruction of Prussianism -will not automatically follow on the defeat of the Prussian armies. That malignant growth has manifested itself in many forms and in many places. Nor can the world be held to be safe for democracy until every one of them has been purged from its midst.