THE DEAD HAND IN HISTORY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LII, Issue 16026, 18 September 1915, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE DEAD HAND IN HISTORY.

■' BY TOHTTNGA. wro d l ad f h v? n i gripS US in a thousand ways, but hardest when we think that -/I* governed by our own intelligence mifd™ us do not perceive its clutching guidance. - The moment that we sav, ibilit . CUstom " we admit the postlJ ° f^T Wn and need » ot let the much an , ° the ast interfere overmuch with out thinking. or ancient unS S VS fl Ually °° d enou 8 11 to follow until it conflicts with the needs of the ay -and is only pernicious when it becomes blind prejudice, closing our eves to new conditions and preventing "us from breaking new paths. In " world - politics, particularly, the dead hand has often throttled intelligence and reconsideration, not merely by the prejudices ' -li lgn ° rant and uninformed, but As visibly bv the preconceptions inoculated into students of History and national! leaders of renown.

For example ! A man like Cromwell as governed in his diplomacy bv the ineradicable belief that Spain was the enemy of freedom. In the middle of the Seventeenth Century Spain was already decadent as a great power. It is easy to say " decadent," of course, but in this case Spain had visibly gone to pieces. Her monstrous pretensions, the ambitious tyranny that had threatened Northern freedom and overshadowed the new continents, had been pricked bv English and Dutch—English, not British, you will notice—and was dwindling like a bladder. The Spanish bid for world-dominion had vanished and another menace to Europe was advancing in the shape of French autocracy, yet Cromwell, nurtured on the once-essential dread of Spain, never changed with the times. To him, the Armada was always in the Channel, the little "Revenge" still fought for a day and a night her lonely battle against fifty-three. Yet Huguenots were then born and wed who would be driven into exile; Dutchmen were full-grown who would hold Louis -XiV. at bay; Englishmen were at' school who would die on European battlegrounds to save the free nations from the Bourbons of France. Cromwell was guided in this by the dead hand of the Elizabethans, and was blind, in his reading of History, to the warning signs of his own day.

But. it may be said, Cromwell was only an ignorant brewer, a great soldier but a poor ruler and a worse diplomatist. Let that - pass, then, and take Salisbury, of our own time- Lord Salisbury was not an ignorant brewer; he was the able chief of the greatest family in England, the direct heir of the traditions, the wealth, tRe standing, the education and the sources of information, which had given the Cecils and the Balfours place among British statesmen for three hundred years. Yet Salisbury, taught by the men who had fought Napoleon, influenced by the prejudices and preconceptions of Britain's stupendous struggle with her French neighbour, transferred to France in the Nineteenth. Century the same unreasoning antagonism that Cromwell had for Spain in the Seventeenth. To say that in this he only shared the feelings of many of his countrymen is quite true, but this only begs the question, for the dead hand guided them all. - Germany was a kindred nation, and not to be distrusted, for had not v the Prussians been our allies • two generations before. France" was still regarded as a disguised c ogre whom it was treachery •' to Nelson to do anything but distrust. • \

Imagine it! a Less than a quarter of. a century ago Lord Salisbury, with almost unanimous .British approval, gave Heligoland to Germany—to Germany which was already Prussianised, to Germany swollen by the crushing of Denmark, the ' overthrow of Austria, the Blunder of France. A few years later, our same Lord Salisbury, beyond all doubt and question a typical Englishman and a patriotic statesman— trained, educated, experienced, but prejudiced—nearly involved the Empire in war with* France, over the paltry Fashoda incident, and this also with very general approval. He could not see that Germany was the enemy, that France had ceased to be a menace to the world, and had become a natural giferdian of civilised peace. He could, not realise that, in Berlin, unscrupulous schemes planned and plotted ceaselessly to create international dissensions, playing a " cut-throat euchre" game of diplomacy to gather in for themselves the prize of world-dominion. The dead hand guided him. Salisbury thought as did Pitt, but in. a new Europe, of which the Pitts never dreamed.

If you think that such frames of mind are peculiar to British statesmen, necessarily harmonious in thought with a British democracy which owes its strength to its steadiness and reluctance to change, turn to the part played by Russia in the attack made by Germany upon France in 1870. Russia threatened to attack Austria if that country assisted France, and only later, when Bismarck was preparing in 1875 to " bleed France white," did Russia assist Britain to maintain international peace. We may dismiss all the many explanations offered since by Russian writers as complicated and unsatisfying, and may safely accept the obvious truth that Russia still thought of France as Napoleonic and menacing, arid that Russian statesmen did not realise their mistake until too late to prevei«t Prussia, flushed with repeated victories, from absorbing all. modem Germany and riveting the bonds of vassallage upon Austria. They were obsessed by the burning of Moscow. They feared the dead hand of Napoleon the Great in the shoddy glove of Napoleon the Little. We British are a little loath to speak of our kings as individuals until they have been a long time departed, but there is a recent British king who deserves the grateful thoughts of every man who realises what we fight for to-day. That is Edward VII. He saw the meaning of German preparations, he foresaw that in the Great Alliance of to-day lay Europe's only hope, and he worked with all the strength that was in him to bring that Alliance about. Edward brushed aside by his example and influence the cobweb prejudices which divided us from the French. Edward reminded the Italian people of British friendship in their time of need, and f-hook the confidence of the Italian monarchy in the Triple Alliance. Edward convinced British statesmen of Britain's peril, and laid in firm ground the foundations of the Alliance that is saving civilisation now.

If we try to understand how a king so unassuming and so unpretentious as Edward was. so clear-sight-ed and so singularly sound and successful in his diplomacy, we can easily find the reason in his instinctive judgment of men and in his long exclusion by constitutional custom from participation in affairs of state. Sixty years of extraordinary intimacy with European life, of complete irresponsibility of observation, of growing identification with new thoughts, new ideas, and a new Europe, had taught him to trust his own judgment and given him the opportunity to ponder over the situation in silence and to realise the only remedy. However that may be, Edward VII. was the greatest statesman of our generation, not perhaps by the possession of the greatest natural ability, but certainly because he was guided not by the dead hand of the past but by the living hand "of the present. He rightly read his History and saw that "the enemy" changes as the nations in their turn to tyrants faJL"