BIG BATTALIONS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 12243, 6 January 1902, Page 6

BIG BATTALIONS.

TO THE EDITOIt. Sin.—T bear no ill-will to Mr Barclay, though I could wish ho were on this side of the great gulf fixed between—you underi stand; and I will but observe that cynicism , —the poor modern counterfeit, not the ; right, noble, ancient, and original article so 1 named—is generally born of mere short sight. Napoleon states the obvious enough fact that Providence is generally on the side of big battalions; he fails to ask the pertinent query: "Who made those same battalions big? Sir, in an ordered npiverse the strength of the strong, no less than the successes due to the possesion of that strength, must come from operation of inevitable, (lawless law. Wo who believe in God must not so lightly hold our faith as to suppose that " accident" may baffle His supreme decrees; His will must ever be our final formula. Might is emphatically right in tho long run, as Carlylo taught 113 long 'ago in his magnificently forceful way, lor might depends upon conformity to universal law. (See "Past and Present," p. 16>, "John Stirling." p. 169, and "Miscellaneous Essays," vol. VI, pp. 113, 139, 158. I give theto references because the point is an important one, and there may bo a few among the readers of this note inclined to pursue it further.) If England has increased, as she indubitably has increased, to a pitch of prido and power unprecedented in the history . of . the world eo far as known,

philosophy will find the fact based on just this conformity with universal law, Carlylo declares. What made Eomo tho immense— the world-wide empire that sho was? Her stern morality, her grand subordination of the individual to the ideal unity—Eomo realising in tho art of living what Greece had taught in painting, poetry, and sculpture: it is precisely that same moral greatness, that supreme devotion to ideal duty that has made England a still greater Rome. With tho |iecnliar awkward modesty that ii our racial characteristic wo hide this fact under a score of odd disguises; we talk of " bulldog courage," of " pulling things out of the tire," of " seeing it through," of " British pluck "—of anything but the strict truth, to state which socms to savour of proclaiming our own virtues. Remembering Antisthencs and Socrates, J don't know whether after all our method is not quite as open to the charge of pride. But, hide it as we will, the national ideal is tint of doing duty, of l>cing faithful unto death: it is, indeed, that " righteousness" that, all the prophets of all time unito in saying, " exalfcth a nation ": and whilo that high ideal still is England's, she shnll assuredly have " big battalions "—physical, mental, spiritual might to aid her in the service of • the world.—l am, etc., Crates.