WHY WE DO NOT MAFFICK

Evening Star, Issue 16923, 21 December 1918, Page 8

WHY WE DO NOT MAFFICK

[By “Alpha of the Plough,’* in Lon-doX ‘Daily News.’]

I see that some writers in the Pres( are commenting on the calm with _ which the great nows of these days is being re ceived by the public and contrasting if with the temper of the Boer War dayj and the wild debauch of Mafeking night, What is the meaning of it? About th« fact there can bo no doubt. I walked from Picadilly-oircus to the Law Court* on Monday afternoon when the newsboyi were shouting the tidings of the “ unconditional surrender ” of Bulgaria, and apart from an exceptional eagerness fol papers I saw no evidence of excitement. People looked smiling and happy and seemed to carry themselves with more than customary briskness and buoyancy. But that might have been due to the sunshine and the nipping and eager ail of autumn that was abroad. In any case there was no sign of a people who had lost their heads or were drunk with toryit was not because the magnitude of the news was not understood. Everybody understood it. It was as clear ps tha writing on the wall of Belshazzars Palace. It proclaimed the greatest happening not in the history of this country only but in the history of mankind. Despotism had gambled for the world and had lost. The end might be delayed but tine doom was irrevocable. In the struggle between the sword and the moral law for the governance of men the sword was broken. Militarism was dead and the world was set free. All this was implicit in the news that burst on the streets on Monday afternoon. If ever there was an excuse for extravagant demonstratians it was here, and yet the public mind showed no excitement or frenzy.

It is no new phenomenon. Throughout the war there has been a complete absence of mafficking. On only one occasion have we even allowed the hells to ring, and we regretted the fact immediately it was done. It was the advance on Cambrai last year that led to this departure from the normal, and within a few days Nemesis taught us a lesson that we are not likely to forget. There will be no more bellringing until the Kaiser cries “Kanierad” and hands his “ good German sword ” to President Wilson to snap across his knee. It is the only obvious move left for him by which he can break the most utter personal catastrophe that has befallen anyone since another ambitious gentleman fell headlong, With hideous ruin and combustion, down To bottomless perdition.

And yet not the only move. His ancestor Frederick used to carry a dosfi of poison in his pocket against emeo cency. Perhaps William. . . . Bu^ no. I think he will hand the despot sword to the democratic President. When that happens there will be time for th< bellringers to go to the belfry. Then w< will let the bells speak as they neve* spoke before. But why are we, who were so noisy and blatant over the trumpery events of 1900, so restrained and self-governed now? It would be pleasant to think that we had grown wiser in the interval; but that ij not the reason. The reason is to be found in the circumstances of the two wars. The Boor War was the vulgarest war we have ever been enraged in. It was not even a decent Imperial war. It was a squalid wai begot by finarieicis who wanted to control the gold mir.es that had been discovered in Xaboih’s -vineyard. It sprang out of the gambling mania- of the ’nineties and the choddv Imperialism of which Mr Kipling with his barrio melodies was the prophet. It appealed to everything that waj base, rapacious and degrading, and it was accompanied by its proper symptoms—thfl release of the viipst passions and -an orgy of sham patrioti-m soaked in whisky. Ws were engaged in a dirty war, and mafficking was its natural atmosphere.

But. if that was the lowest note we. have ever touched in war, this is tho highest and deepest. Tt does not appeal to the worst in us. but to the best. It found u.9 with as clear a conscience as war ever found any people, and the issue in tha public mind Tins never been mixed up with schemes of plunder, of conquest, or of anything less than the deliverance of tha world from the curse of war. And became of the grandeur of the stakes and the vastness of the peril the national mind has been tuned to a key far different from that of mafficking. It has left mafficking manners to those who were engaged in mafficking operations. It is in Germany where the bells have rung, and the streets have been festooned, and tho hammers have struck silver nails into the monstrous wooden effigy of Hindenburg. Tho enemy had thrir rejoicing betimes. It is oyer now. The bells have gone to the melting pot, and there are no queues waiting to drive nails into the wooden effigy of Hiudenburg. I think the time is near when that effigy v ill be the food of such a flame as the world lias never seen.—a flame in which the ged of war will vanish from tho earth amid tho universal gratitude of men. Then we shall icjoicc, not in the mafficking fadiion, but in a way worthy of a nation that lias done the greatest tiling in all its splendid history.