INDUSTRIAL ARMAGEDDON.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXI, Issue 15488, 14 December 1910, Page 4

INDUSTRIAL ARMAGEDDON.

CHANGES OF A GENERATION

NEW ZEALAND'S POSITION

In his address to the pupils of the Christchurch Technical College yesterday, Professor J. Macmillan Brown made somo remarks on the industrial future of the world.

" There are changes coming over the industrial world," he said, "that will tell greatly upon the future of this country. The industries of the world are going into the hands of the nations with tho greatest war departments. At the present time New Zealand is as far from tho centres of commerce as any country, except tho Antarctic, can be,' but tho Pacific Ocean is going to be tho centre of enterprise and struggle, and the nations of Europe have become conscious of this and have been trying to get front sections! on the land surface. Within a generation New Zealand will see great happenings and be involved in world-wide movement?, and then it will be that her marvellous possibilities will bo realised." Professor Brown went on to say that tho South Island possessed a- great water-front and loftv mountains that would develop a mountain and a maritime people of the kind that had never been defeated in war. The dominion, instead of being the tail, would become tho shield of "the British Empire when there was fought in. the Pacific Ocean the final struggle of human history, the Armageddon from which would be evolved the federation of mankind and the cohsumraation of peace. •< Those who want peace at once," he added, have had their commonsense obscured by their great ideals. There is going to bo a great struggle undoubtedly, and it is not very far off. If the British Empire, and we as a part of it, are not prepared for that struggle, we shall be trampled under foot by an autocracy, which would be the greatest disaster that can befall mankind, for the British Empire is the guardian of human liberty.' , , . "The idea that Britain is losing her commercial position," Professor Brown continued, "was manufactured m Oreri many. Turn back the pages of history to the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, and i von will find the belief in the decadence 'of Britain. Yet this decadent Britain i Ins built up a commerce and an Empire ;such as the world has never seen be-

fore. I have very few doubts about the struggle that is before us, for history has not ono instance to give us of an island nation that has retained it« virility having been defeated upon tha sea by a continental nation.'