TWO KINDS OF GENEROSITY.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 24 January 1925, Page 4

TWO KINDS OF GENEROSITY.

It is very pleasant to be told by Senator Borah that the United States settlement with Britain in the matter of war indebtedness is the most generous proposition in history. Unless generosity be interpreted in the very narrowest sense, to refer to money only, we should have thought that history, even that history which, is almost contemporary, had one or two better examples to show. There is, for instance, the case of an Empire which, in August, 1914, before there was any suggestion of attack on its own person, laid aside the ordinary business of life to block the path of the swaggering bully who was marching on Belgium! That was an act which most men would call generous. Again, this same Empire, with other Powers, held the Barbarian at bay for three long years, and kept the very throne of Civilisation inviolate, until another nation had made up its mind that such incidents as the sinking of the Lusitania called for something more than an endless stream of Notes. When we recall that the Western nation was never above making money out of the nasty quarrel with which it preferred not to soil its hands, we cannot help thinking that x fine generosity was shown by the others, who put right before profit. But maybe we are biased; Senator Borah, of course, will not be. Moreover, can it be that the Senator ha.s never heard of that little proverb which warns people who live in glass houses? The American debt to France during the Amerititui Revolution, he said, was paid in full. So far, so good. But Senator Borah added the opinion that France joined in the revolution for her own interests, when it was known that America would win. We should have imagined that anyone belonging to Senator Borah’s country would have bee.n very discreet in mentioning the case of a- nation standing out of a war until it could pick the winning side. And the best of it all is that this is the same American Senator who cries to the skies against any attempt to “entangle” the United States in European affairs. St> long as the flypaper of Europe was spread with gold there was no objection to entanglement; when, ten years ago, it was spread with blood, and again now when it is smeared with economic wreckage, the American blue-bottle would rather buzz around its own hack-yard.