NATIONAL SUPREMACY

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 8735, 18 May 1914, Page 4

NATIONAL SUPREMACY

Lord Haldane delivered a striking speech on national supremacy a few weeks ago, the occasion being a dinner hold by tho London Solicitors Company. “We may be as unpopular as you please, but we do guide, and we do lead,” declared the Lord Chancellor. Tho British nation, in fact, led tho world/ It was a nation which even the Roman nation in its zenith did not surpass, and our Ministers were charged with the trusteeship of a groat possession to be handed down to those who came after. They had to hand over to their successors tho inheritance undimmed and undiminished, yet they were face to face with problems that were appalling in their magnitude. To-day we stood first in tho world in population and industrial output. The capacity of our workmen was very great; that was the result of tradition and national qualities. But there had arisen in tho last six or seven years a new movement. Tho scientific effort made abroad, made by more countries than one, was raising their workmen to a height we had not set before ourselves Continental nations were substituting for the old apprenticeship system something new and very formidable— -the training in the trade continuation schools—and the country would have to face that in future. 'We too often thought that because we were prosperoils and had been at the head, we should always keep our lead. Me should only keep our lead if wo thought ahead, and acted ahead, the national awakening would come, and he was anxious to see that it did not come too late. Then there were new problems of which our forefathers did not dream. Labour was better educated, and the standard of those who worked with their hands had risen.People became conscious .that the gap which separated those who worked with their heads and those who worked with their hands was unduly great so far as remuneration and the comforts of life were concerned, and they ; had to reckon with it. What they were concerned with was that the change should come peacefully and quietly, in such a f-ashion that it would, make for the w-ell-beirig of the State instead of bringing about its destruction. They had to go to the deeprooted cause, and endeavour to bring about a sense_ of the absolute necessity of solidarity between the workmen and employers of tho country.