NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 14303, 24 February 1910, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

ENGLAND AND GERMANY. Hkrr Maximilian Harden, the German publicist, and editor of the Zukunft, has an article in the New York World, informing Americans that the time has arrived when England and Germany must compromise or fight. "Even tho dullest eye," he says, "can see the • uselessness of the brotherly love swindle. We can either go to war with England (and war with us is desired not. by King Edward, but by the party which includes the Tories, the Ghidstonians, and the Socialists), or we can come to an agreement with England over the naval situation. There is no other alternative, for Lord Charles Beresford's plan (of a gigantic loan) would also bring war, a financial war, which would bo worse for us to fight than a war of weapons. Germany must.say to England, 'Every sane German respects England's power, and does not doubt that in the hour of . danger her sons would swarm ~to her aid ; therefore Germany wants peace with England, but tho time when you could treat us as poor relations has passed. We are rich and strong, and we demand equal treatment. You cannot destroy our power by a commercial or a. gunpowder war. Though the Empire's finances are not yet in order, ,we have many further sources, of revenue. We can create State monopolies of the sale of coal and. petroleum, and of the supply of electricity. If you destroy our navy and seize our colonies to-morrow Germany will not rest until she has been avenged. Germany's population grows at the rate of a. million yearly, and in 1920 it will bo 73,000,000. They require room. Will you in return for fair compensation accept the inevitable necessity, and let Germany occupy as.< much room in the world as sho requires? Will "you permit her to incorporate in the Empire such smaller peoples as would profit thereby, since no sane German nowadays dreams of colonising part of ; the.American continent, or will you compel Germany unwillingly to mobilife against you to obtain room at your cost after' a long and perhaps barbarous war? ,You have the choice.' " There is no other way in which to talk to England, according to Herr Harden, and tho price of peace, as defined by the editor of Die Zukunft, is. apparently that England should allow the Germans to secure for themselves the hegemony in Europe "a hegemony," ho continues, "which would pretty soon: teach the Danes and • the Dutch the advantages of closer union with the German Empire. To England leave what she has already won, and add thereto Arabia, tho Congo, and all the seas of all the world. To Germany, as the leading Power in Europe, concede the light to extend - her frontiers to the east and north-west. Only on such a basis is an agreement .possible."-

• THE UNREST IN INDIA. Tho most ominous feature of Indian unrest, according to tho London Times, is that it has been promoted chiefly by Brahmins, that is, by the highest of all Hindu castes, whose influence not only permeates the whole social and religious world of Hinduism, but is firmly seated in almost every Government office iu India. For throughout the Public Service, tho native hierarchy is from top to bottom mainly recruited from amongst Hindu Brahmins. There is no need to assumo that all native servants of the Government are disloyal, any more than, that the majority of tho Hindu Brahmins are disaffected, but when one bears in mind the peculiarly compelling character of caste ties in India—more rigid than any eocial ties known to Western communities—the immense difficulties which too often hamper or prevent the detection of political crime in India arc readily understood. A native official who would shrink with horror from aiding or abetting the perpetration of a crima would shrink with almost equal honor from helping to hand over to, alien forms of justice a fellow casto-man, belonging, like himself, to the highest of the "twiceborn" castes. Even greater is the influence exercised by the < Hindu Brahmin upon the education of Indian youth, and the number of. 6tudents amongst those now arrested in the Bombay Presidency affords further evidence of tho sinister part which the Hindu Brahim has played in encouraging, directly or indirectly, the worst forms of seditious disloyalty.

THE LIBERAL PARTY AND SOCIALISM. , The so-called Liberal party in Britain is being hurried, voluntarily or involuntarily, but rapidly and irresistibly, in the direction the Socialists desire. We now know, says tho.London Times, that Mr. Lloyd-George contemplates the nationalisation of land, and Mi'. Churchill the nationalisation of railways. They have been compelled to disclose themselves by the necessity of putting some substance into their policy before the electors, and since it is a policy which they owe to socialistic thinkers they have no choice but to go forward on the lines laid down, whether they know it themselves or not. Neither of these ambitious gentlemen has ever shown any grasp of economic questions or given proof of having studied them at all, and it is possible that they did not coo exactly what they were doing in embarking on a policy which they thought, likely to be popular. They have become puppets moved by the invisible wires of socialist logic, and they are bound to go on. Land and railway .nationalisation are merely the . two instalments of the complete collectivist programme which happen to be or. seem, the easiest to achieve in this country. No one who has studied the groundwork and principles of socialism with care can fail to see that it lias acquired the intellectual mastery of the Liberal party, which 'has long been living on an unintelligent opportunism devoid of ideas, and, therefore, of vitality.