WAR AND NATIONAL LIFE.

Northern Advocate, 22 September 1914, Page 4

WAR AND NATIONAL LIFE.

There Avas a time Allien people used to proclaim Avar as a beneficial agent in the life of a healthy community. It Avas asserted that campaigns eliminated surplus population; that they fostered the traits of self-denial and sacrifice on behalf of the nation; and finally that they were a kind of divine ordinance by Avhich God tried His people. Happily very feAV people to-day look upon war as anything less than a dire calamity forced on the Avorld by ignorance and the machinations of an ambitious military caste. If history teaches anything it is that those countries which are incessantly at wav are the least advanced in the arts of civilisation, says the Christchurcli

"Star." The Balkan States furnish a pregnant example. For centuries these little nations 'have struggleff with themselves and Avith the Turk and the advance in their social and industrial institutions has been practically nil. It is safe to say that this group 'of States has,not produced half a dozen great men in the spheres of art. sciences, literature and invention during the last hundred years, and that a single great measure of social reform 'has not issued from their legislatures in the same period. The semi-warlike state which has existed between these countries has completely crippled 'industry and has rendered ineffective those measures of social amelioration that require long periods of peace for their fulfilment. The principal reason why Great Britain of all countries in Europe has secured the largest measure of personal freedom is that she has enjoyed long intervals of comparative peace, in which industry 'was permitted to expand, and thinkers were allowed sufficient time to put their schemes into operation. Englishmen -owe that little stretch of intervening sea an inestimable debt. It has at ail times formed a natural barrier against the invader, and behind it has flourished the embryo of democratic, government, the sovereign right of all civilised peoples. On the Continent of Europe, on the other hand, the conditions have not been such as AA r ould promote the groAvth of democratic ideals'. The mere fact that Continental countries are separated by artificial boundaries leaves a wide field open to a rapacious military class Avhich may arise at any time in a particular country. The history of Europe - has shown over and over again that when/an ambitious military .party becomes predominant it not only stifles all forms of popular movements in its oavii country, but its ambitions carry it farther afield and neighbouring states suffer from its policy of conquest. It is little Avonder therefore that the nations of Europe dropped so far behind Britain in their ideas* of freedom and equality. Tn the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries England was throwing off' the burden of the feudal system. It not until the great Revolution- that France gave the death blow to feudalism, but German feudalism lasted down to past the middle of the nineteenth century. The result has been that, suddenly freeing themselves from the oppression of an autocratic military system which had drained France of its resources and reduced its inhabitants to a state of bitter poverty, the people, unaccustomed to the new power that had fallen into their hands, did not understand its use, and, intoxicated by their success, they committed those excesses which made the A\ r orld shudder. The inevitable reaction followed, and the populace who Jiad yelled for liberty, equality and fraternity folloAved abjectly the lead of Napoleon. Perhaps the appearance of such a .strong military class in Germany, especially in Prussia, could be explained by a recrudescence of that feudal spirit Avhich has Avithin comparatively recent times disappeared from German life. Nevertheless, the idea of personal freedom is of new groAvth in Germany, and it could not be expected to offer that spirited resistance to the military caste Avhich that spirit would offer in Britain if the occasion arose.