Ending Shams.

Manawatu Times, Volume XL, Issue 1372903, 25 October 1917, Page 3

Ending Shams.

WHAT THE WAR IS DOING. IMMENSE CHANGES. Iu the London Daily Mail “An officer on Leave’’ writes; — The old England of the great Harries—Henry V. and Henry VIII. —of the Ironsides, of the Napoleonic Wars, has found itself. Slow to anger, it, has at length boon aroused; slow r to move, it has at length fastened its bulldog grip on the enemy; slow to comprehend. but quick to adapt itself to great emergencies, it has revealed its wonderful aptness at improvisation. Long-suffering. God-fearing, tenacious old England has been born again.

It will be for the historian to examine and Analyse the immense changes, deeper and more far-reaching than any since the Civil War, which this country has undergone since that fateful August 4. 1914’. Yet one must be very blind not to be aware of the revolution which lias taken place in the mental outlook of the inhabitants of the United Kingdom. Old barriers have boon broken down, a steady fusion of the classes has sot in ancient prejudices have been swept away, political formulae have been upset, and the professional politician, with all his mumbojumbo of catchwords i and copybook maxims, has boon exposed as a humbug. A sane and healthy democracy is on the march to govern England as she was wont to be governed——by a Parliament representing the people. The more one examines the abstract issues of this war, the clearer it becomes that- it is the conflict, between despotism. as represented by the Hohen/.0lTerns and thv Hapsbnrgs, and democracy as represented by the peoples of the British Empire and France and Russia.

But this is infringing on the task of the historian. We are still too close to this great revolution to be able to weigh and appraise correctly its whole scope and effects. It, bears on its surface, however, certain symptoms which are worth noting if only as indications pf what the new England will hi* upon which the survivors of this war will have to lay the foundations ot the great work of re-const met ion. TRIUMPH OP EFFICIENCY. One of the most remarkable changes which this war has brought about is, iu aiv opinion, the triumph ot etliciency ov r (lie old traditions of birth and age. U is <nic. that in modern Eng-

hind the young man has always had his chance, but almost solely in business and in one of two professions. What is happening now is that the young man is getting his opportunity in the Services and in the State Departments as well, and this altogether irrespective of his family tree and wealth. iSTor does this triumph of the young man mean that we have adopted the “Too Old at Forty’ 7 theory. The senior and the junior are working hand in hand — but only the efficient senior and the efficient junior; the incompetent is being weeded out and neither his grey hairs nor his pedigree nor his influence shall save him.

In contemplating this most satisfactory innovation, lot, mo remark on another feature of this symtom of _ our renascence. The young man is disappearing. It is the ago of precoslty. A boy leaves school, has three mouths of intensive training at 'Woolwich or Sandhurst or in a cadet corps, gets his commission, ami hey presto! before he is out of his teens you iiml him earnest self-possessed, responsible, and, bV some trick of Nature, wearing the air and the manner of a man ten years his senior. And the surprising thing is that the boy does his work every bit as well as that man would, though ten years ago the idea of an officer commanding a company t the ago of do would have struck down with apoplexy half the denizens of the smoking room at the United Service Club. One of the most visible effects of (his breaking down of old barriers has been to simplify life. It is only by the pioccss of retrospection that one can really understand how utterly life in England up to the war, was controlled by snobbishness. There is no space here to enumerate the things which in different grades of society trout Alav tail to \N igan. one might and might not know. The quicker way is to reflect on the tilings which the most “exclusive" folk are doing, from necessity, from patriotism, or because if. is the fashion , (English snobbishness will always have its sav) in war time. All ol ns have

each and severally discovered that we can get on fpiito well without Monto Carlo, racing, yachting, professional football, champagne for supper; and even if the post office carries out its threat to dc-snobbify our addresses, and call West Kensington Hammersmith, and shear Hyde Park off the letter paper of the Maida-Valers, we shall doubtless manage to put up with that also.