THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1887.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIV, Issue 8064, 27 September 1887, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1887.

Yesterday our exposition of th© principles which ought to guide the electors in recording their votes concluded with the remark that : if, all over' the colony, they exercised their privilege without fear or halting, tbe iiicubus of the Stout-Vogel Ministry Y/fji'ild thenceforth be virtually a thing of the past. These words have been more than verified; for the result of yesterday's verdict given by the people at the polling booths is, that the Stout- Ministry has virtually ceased to be. The defeat of one or two ordinary members of the Cabinet, while greatly weakening it, would yet not necessarily have imperilled its existence; but, when its chief is rejected by his constituency, it to all inter ts becomes extinct. The Government of the colony must, of course be carried on, and the duties of its administration will no doubt be attended to by those members of the Cabinet who have been fortunate enough to be returned. But the probabilities are that Sir R. Stout will forthwith forward his resignation to the Governor, and thus enable him to summon some prominent member of the Opposition to undertake the task of forming a Ministry with a view to meeting Parliament at the earliest possible date.

It is possible that the idea given, currency to a short time ago of some member of the ministerial party resigning his seat, in the event of the Premier's anticipated defeat, for the purpose of saving the Stout-Vogel administration from being utterly broken up, may,

I now that his defeat is an actual fact, be again revived. The idea, however, is impracticable. For, even if a •at at were tbus heroically rendered , vacant, the necessary writ for the 'j filling of the same could not be issued until Parliament had assembled and elected its Speaker. Besides, the Ministry would meanwhile, in the eye of ! the law, be constitutionally re-, garded as dead. As a matter of fact, however, the result would nob have eventually been different, even if all the members of the Cabinet had been elected by their constituencies. For the overthrow of their party, which prior to the election was a moral certainty, was yesterday transformed into a demonstration. The elections have gone against the Ministry to a greater extent than was hoped for by the* most sanguine of their opponents, and the necessity would thus have been imposed upon the Premier to place his resignation in His Excellency's hands, either immediately, or on the assembling of Parliament, as was done by the Atkinson Ministry in 1884. They certainly could not have ventured, without falling in public respect, to retain their portfolios; as, in that case the House would resent their conduct as an insult, and at once take measures for ignominiously ejecting them from the benches they bad occupied too long for the country's good. The outcome of yesterday's voting leaves now no doubt on the fact that the anticipations of defeat for his Government, to which the Premier gave expression in his famous letter to the Agent-General, were well founded. And the realisation of them proves the utter and wasteful folly the Ministry were guilty of when they solicited and obtained permission to appeal to the country against the condemnation the House had passed on them, and without the slightest justification entailed on the Treasury the. expense of a second session. For the sake of retaining office they selfishly concluded to try their chances,, even though these were the opposite of enticing. Well, they have made their trial, and miserably failed. As a plea for being allowed to make their appeal to the country, they asserted without any good foundation that they possessed the confidence. of the people. Well, they have made their appeal, and the country ' has unmistakably declared that they did not command public confidence. No repulse indeed could have been more complete and humiliating. In the history of political contesta it seldom or never happens that the Premier of the country fails to secure his constituency, and the rejection of Sir Robert Stout, especially when taken in conjunction with that of the Hon. Mr. Tole, shows, as nothing else could, how thoroughly the Cabinet was out of sympathy with the electors, and also how ignorant the several members thereof were of the dissatisfaction which their disastrous Administration had created. Perhaps they were intentionally ignorant. Perhaps they were wilfully blind to what they could scarcely fail to perceive. They have now, however, been made to feel how dangerous it is to presume upon the goodwill of a people, especially when proceeding on such a course as must naturally cause alienation. The price of such presumption has, in the case of the Stout-Vogel Ministry, been their summary expulsion from office. Referring to the local issue of yesterday's electoral doings, we feel constrained to say that it was nearly as satisfactory as any reasonable man could wish. The defeat of Mr. Tole is a great victory for the Opposition. The Minister of Justice was the repre-< sentative of the Government in this part of the colony, and he selected that portion of his old constituency which gave him the greatest prospects of success. He was opposed, however,. and, as the end has proved, opposed successfully by Mr. Withy, who laboured under the disadvantage of being a comparative stranger. Mr. Withy has conducted the contest on the most honourable terms, resorting to no artifice for the purpose of prejudicing his rival, and avoiding even those customary accommodations which most politicians traffic in when they, for the sake of popularity, adapt their views to the opinions of those whose support they solicit. He fought his way by virtue of sterling mettle, and the place which he occupied at the top of the poll, shows the place he has gradually won in public favour. It may be that his victory was in part due to the badness of the cause his antagonist was contending for; but none the less is it true that it was in a higher measure attributable to his possession of those qualities of mind and character which the people desire to see in their legislators. His election to the House of Representatives is a decided gain to Auckland. It is not becoming to boast over a fallen foe; but it must yet be considered a reason for congratulation that at least two seats have been wrested from the Government, that of Newton, and that of Marsden, which Mr. Dargaville expected to be his for the asking. In addition to these, the new seat of Eden has been secured for the Opposition by the election of Mr. Mitchelson. It is also a source of gratification that the most of those constituencies, from which anything like complete returns have been received, have either returned their old members, or candidates who have no sympathy with the Stout-Vogel administration. Even Mr. Moss must now be ranked among those who will hold aloof from Stout-Vogelian Associations. On the very eve of bis election he repented of his alliance with them, and to this he owes it that he was not relegated with Sir R. Stout, the Hon. Mr. Tole, Mr. Dargaville, and others, to the place of the disowned. Saved by the skin of his teeth, he has had his lesson, and will henceforth keep on his good behaviour. . Taken all together the result of yesterday's proceedings, on the part of the electors was such as all interested in political and financial reform in conducting the affairs of the country, ought to be satisfied with; and it is earnestly to be hoped that any feeling of soreness induced by the contest, which is now over, may be succeeded by one of acquiescence in that which has eventuated.

Concerning Samoa, the Hamburg Press protests against the annexation being limited to the island of Upolo, " as the group will be of the greatest value to Germany." In another direction, the King of the Belgians, contemplating the danger of his country being annexed, is making a round of

the provinces stirring up the national enthusiasm, and warning his subjects that unless they are prepared to defend their independence, it must soon be lost. So say the telegrams, and scarcely a day passes now without the electric wire bringing fresh evidence of the bjgh-handed spirit and aggressive policy that have come to characterise the Government at Berlin. One morning we hear that the Sultan of Zanzibar has. yielded to a fresh demand from the same quarter for another slice of his territory ; and just before there was news of the threatened bombardment, on a petty pretext, of a port of the little Bulgarian State. Here is a specimen crop of announcements within a few days of each other ; and when the proceedings they refer to are current in so many parts of the globe, is it any wonder that conjecture should be busy, and that people everywhere should begin to consider where it is all to end 1 It is not too much to say that all civilised nations, if not all their Governments, heartily rejoiced when the great German people came to be consolidated into one grand State, ceasing to be split up in a multitude of petty principalities, each guided by the individual ambition of its ruler. Mankind at large rejoiced at the realisation of the noble dream of Goethe for Germany, as well as that of Rienzi for Italy. But the nations will soon alter this feeling— have already begun to do so—when they see a people great by their numbers, intellectual advancement, and central geographical position in Europe, proceed to make use of their natural advantages and new found strength to the detriment of their weaker neighbours, and display the ambition of a European dictatorship. It is a fact that their books of geographical instruction in the public schools are made to instruct the children that Denmark, and Switzerland, and Holland, and Belgium are naturally part and parcel of Germany, and ought to be incorporated with it. It was on the plea of identity of race that Alsace and part of Lorraine were annexed by Germany against the will of the annexed people, but this ethnological plea cannot be cited in reference to at least three of the four other populations whose annexation is now contemplated and recommended in German school books. No wonder those little States feel themselves in jeopardy, and it will be wonderful if the • new found strength i that exhibits the desire of ' conquest does not succeed in calling up a counteracting international combination.

Germany is confident in her military strength, and ever since the days of the Great Frederic the Prussian military system has the reputation of being the most perfect. Its schools train accomplished strategists, and General Von Moltke is one of them. But the world, which adulates success, call him more than that, for he is commonly spoken of as a great military genius. In war, as in other arts, there is something higher than trained talent and cultivated knowledge, namely, genius with its inspirations. General Moltke may be the one thing as well as the other, but we have no evidence of it, because in the two wars which he guided—namely that of 1866 and that of 1870—the advantages were so overwhelmingly in his favour that only a bad strategist, instead of a superior one as he is, could have failed of success. In 1866, when the sudden presentation of the needle gun overturned the Austrian armies, and again in 1870, when 600,000 German troops " put across the frontier in eleven days," overturned the 250,000 French opposed to them (the latter by the bureaucratic corruption in Paris being also inferior in discipline and weapons), General Von Moltke had certainly no field for the display of genius, and it can scarcely be doubted that anyone of perhaps half-a-dozen other accomplished Prussian generals could have successfully performed the work. In a word, matters were so favourable to Moltke that his success could only exhibit him as a skilful General, whereas the victories which Frederic had gained, be- i cause * gained under extraordinary difficulties, against tremendous odds, | stamped him as one of the great captains of history. Perhaps in the war, of which every now and again we hear anticipatory rumours, a burst of genius might unexpectedly present itself to prove more forcible than admirably trained battalions and carefully educated strategists ; but there does not seem much promise of it. The spirit of the day is disappointed and cynical, and such, while it lasts, is a stone floor upon which nothing grows. The cynicism is more obdurate than that of the last century; for, among other reasons, all forms of government have been tried since then and found wanting. There is no expectation of discovering a path to a golden age which fired so many minds a hundred years ago, and, especially in France, kindled an enthusiasm that made itself felt, among other things, in military matters. It was the electric spark of genius in Dumourier and Hoche and ' Moreau that saved the newly-raised conscripts from being beaten down by regularly disciplined armies, and that prevented the revolution being trodden out at the commencement; and which, at a later period, enabled Bonaparte to call up around him a circle of marshals like those which surrounded Macedonian Alexander. There is not now in France, or any other country, the excitation of public feeling which inaugurated that period, but the new conditions under which war can be carried on are perhaps still less conducive to the enthusiasm which helps to develop military genius. The close combat of the past time, when there was scope for the winning of individual honour— the brilliant cavalry charge, the unflinching infantry square, the storming party hurled at the deadly breach— all are things dead and gone, which in future can only be read of but can never, in civilised warfare, be re-en-acted. War has already become an affair of long range, with new developments of destruction in promise for the next struggle, giving battle a still nearer resemblance than now to the i mere killing of game on the battue | system.