AGGRESSION

New Zealand Times, Volume XL, Issue 9041, 12 May 1915, Page 3

AGGRESSION

THE POLICY OF GERMANY. A manifesto issued by the General Federation of Trade Unions, London, contains some interesting quotations from the utterances of German leaders of thought as to the policy of the Empire. Some of these are: “The idea that the weak nation is to have the same right to live as the powerful and vigorous nations represents a presumptuous encroachment on the natural laws of development.”— Von Bernhardi. “ Our people (the Germans) must learn to see that the maintenance of peace ucver can or may ho the goal of a policy.”—Von Bernhardi. “ Such theories only too clearly disseminate the false and ruinous notion .that the maintenance of peace is the ultimate orhject, or at least the chief duty of our policy. To such views, the offspring of a false humanity, the clear and definite answer must be made that, under certain circumstances, it is not only the right, hut the moral duty, of a statesman to bring about a war.” — Von Bernhardi. “The" acts of the State cannot he judged by the standard of individual morality. The end-all and be-all of a State is power, and ho who is not man enough to look this truth in the face should not meddle in politics.”— Troitschke. “ In tiro business of war men.must not regard the massacres, the battles, the burnings, and the marches; they must look at the business of war with the eyes of men. ... It will bo shown that it is a business, divine in itself, and as needful and necessary to the world as eating and drinking or any other work.”—Luther. BRITAIN’S DUTY.

"No comment on these utterances is proposed,” continues the manifesto. “Their significance is obvious, and their influe ne'e has been apparent at Louvain and Reims. Concerning the preparations for war it is difficult, and, perhaps, futile for the non-military mind to speak, but oven to the nonmilitary mind the feverish activity of men who during June swarmed and worked like ants on the strategic railways of Germany had a sinister significance, and strengthened the impression that, however peaceful the desires of the German people might be, their masters bad already determined on 1 war.

“It is obvious that the immediate participation of Britain in the war was neither desired nor expected; her day would gladly have been jiostponed. Loyalty to herself, to her best traditions, and to her treaty obligations made abstention from the conflict impossible, and to-day her people, especially her workpeople, are determined to support not only the neutrality of heroic Belgium, but the honour of nations and the inviolability of treaties. Once involved in such a war, the duty of the movement stood out clearly. It became necessary, apart from all personal considerations of friendship, to offer the fiercest resistance to the aggressor, and to make any sacrifice necessary to bring the war to. a definite and honourable conclusion.”