Mt. Ida Chronicle NASEBY, THURSDAY, JAN. 16, 1896. OUR EMPIRE.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume 26, Issue 1369, 16 January 1896, Page 2

Mt. Ida Chronicle NASEBY, THURSDAY, JAN. 16, 1896. OUR EMPIRE.

The outbursts of angry internationn] passion which have been the characteristic feature of the last month or two have their own advantages as well ;u----their dangers and disasters. The love ot country and the pride of race, which in olden times—when everyone wore a sword and war was the chronic condition of the wor.rl—were, the con Slant ruling pnssionS of Englishmen, require stimulation in these degenerate days, when our enemies are almost exclusively the savage or hall'-civili.sed races which surround (he limits <if our vjist empire. A Hritish expedition t<> the rSoudan, to Afghanistan, to Chitral.

to Ashantee, to Zultilaiid, and the like, brings out still as such work has ever dune, tlie splendid qualities and (logged v.&rsis'r-iice of the Jh'itish soldier, and never does bucli an undertaking come to be carried out but it brings with it some sto«y of magnificent heroism to compel the gratitude of England and the admiration of the world. J>ut though tin.- : i''.r.;ib!v is so. .sfil!

ne .enpimfs' against. whom we have •t'en pitted in all out' recent wars were mi- inferiors from every point of view ; uid that fast alone was sufficient to prevent any real national awakening i)i hinglishmen, any stern warning nom the nation itself, as distinguished trom its mere diplomatists, to give pause to the foes of England. The events of the past two or three weeks have given occasion for such a national awakening, and the awakencome. The inflated and featherheaded young.braggart whom a ludicrous I<ate has placed in the position of a despot oyei- tlie German' nation has taken it into his head to ofi'er an unmannerly insult to' England by parsonally advising one of her vassals Co renounce his allegiance to Her Majesty the Queen. Claiming as we do that the manners of Kings and Kaisers shall be judged by the standard demanded of less exalted beings by civilised society, ,ve pronounce this conduct to be unmannerly the act of an imperial snob, and a petty kind of snob at that. We have not as yet been honoured with an annual subscription from Friedrichsruhe (o Thk Mount Ida Chronicle, and must confess that we have no reason to belieye that this journal is largely read in. Court circles in Berlin—which we modestly suggest is more the Kaiser's loss than ours. But if the fact were otherwise, we should still leave the above words as they stand, in the hope that good might be done bv the plain statement of a plain fact—namely, that when an Emperor behaves like a snob, he does not make snobbishness imperial, but degrades imperialness (we dare say there is a German word which means that, but as there is no English one we have had to coin one) to snobbery. Unfortunately the German Emperor, when he descends to this kind of thing, drags down with him the great German nation whom he represents before the -world, and as the German Government is practically a military despotism, within whose rule neither individual freedom, nor the right of free speech, nor a free press exists, we have had presented to us the spectacle of the German people, with whom for so many years we have lived in the closest amity, and multitudes of whose citizens live among us in these colonies to-day and are welcomed and respected as friends, offer ing to England a boorish insult and taunting her with her impotence t<resent it.

England j s no fc import resen t it, and the answer of Enghnd to tinGerman Emperor's counsel to President Kruger to repudiate British suzerainty is that that suzerainty will be absolutely maintained, and that 110 German interference will be tolerated for an instant. It ought to be ' a matter of the deepest satisfaction to Englishmen everywhere to watch the manner in which this whole Transvaal incident has been treated by the Government of the Queen, with, we may be sure, the hearty and enthusiastic support of Mr Gladstone, Lord Roseherry, and the Liberal Party generally. Towards President Kruger the weaker party whom everyone knows we could crush in six months if we chose— there has been the frankest acknowledgment of wrong and the most sincere offers of conciliation and future friendship. His territory was unjustifiably entered by a British force, though 1101 by the Queen's orders, he has suffered wrong, he has conquered and avenged it, and England finds i>o fault. But to the most powerful military nation in the world, seeking rashly and rudely to interfere in 'tlii.* matter to the detriment of England, there has been given the instant stern command "Stand ofl, this is no concern of yours." That attitude towards the weaker and stronger powers respectively is the fact in the present situation which ought to command the proud support of Englishmen, and will certainly extort the perhaps unwilling respect of England's enemies. Moreover, the whole incident will arouse the national spirit and cement the brotherhood of the widely spread sections of the British race, in a way which, when present pnssions are calmed, will result in a lasting addition of strength to the defensive resources of our Empire. If England had cowered before the recent storm and in a weak spirit of compromise shown that the policy was peace at any price, the act would have been equivalent 10 an avowal to the world that it is 110 longer in the po»-er of Great Britain to defend the British Empire, and the appearance of a hostile squadron off our coasts, with all the horrid concomitants of war, might well have resulted before the end of the present summer. I