THE MASTER WORD.

Ohinemuri Gazette, Volume XXIX, Issue 3996, 20 November 1918, Page 1

THE MASTER WORD.

NOT PEACE BUT RIGHTEOUSNESS THE DREAM OF WORLDCONQUEST, Dr. Norman Maclean made the.following prophetic utterance in the "Scotsman" in August last:— "There are sometimes heard voices summoning the nation, to repent of the fact that we are at war. Thesj are, however, the voices of false prophets who do not see deep enough to realise that peace requires more frequently to be repented of than even war. Twenty years ago, the Armenians were foully massacred, but w.a kept the peace. That peace calls for a repentance deeper far than any war. In days of ease and prosperity the nation made an idol of peace. There were peace societies carrying on a ceaseless propaganda, and Peace Sundays and Peace Congresses ; but while our enemies spoke continuously, o/ peace in public, in secret they were smilingly sharpening their swords. "The prophets of peace forgot that the master word in the ethical vocabulary of humanity-is not peace, but righteousness. Peace is only the by-product of righteousness; and the peace that has not its; roots in righteousness is only the scum on the surface of the foul and stagnant pool. "To keep the peace when the innocent are being massacred by b utd force, when the weak are overwhelmed by greed and lust, that is damnation. "In centuries to come;** when men will compute the greatest. Christian deeds ever enacted by nations in their corporate capacity, they will doubtless place two in the foremost—the freeing of the world's slaves and the taking of. the foremost place in .the battlefront of this war by Britain in the defence of the right. "The pacifists forget that there are wild beasts yet loose in the world. The shepherd leads the flocks to the green pastures, a man of peace; but when the wolves come he\must seize his weapons and fight. Let Heaven be praised that in these last years we have proved ourselves shepherds and not hirelings. To-dSy, the wolves snarl as does the pack, despoiled of its prey, turning to its liar. THE LAST OFJVIANY. "If anything be certain, it is this.! that the we rid-devastating war sprang from the lust of world-domin-ion. There is no thought more encouraging to-day than t,he thought how the dream of world-conquest has always ended in misery. The Kaisor is only the last of many. Three hundred years before the Christian era Alexander the Great swept through the ancient world' like a tornado, but at the age of 32 he died at. Bagdad, and his opalescent dream of wcrlddominion burst like a bubble. Rorr-3 built up a world empire so great, that Cicero could write: 'Wherever you are, remember you are equally within the power of the Emperor'; but the men who wielded that sceptre came almost all to a violent end, and- the Empire fell tottering to the earth. "Napoleon dominated the world with the dynamic force of his personality, making Emperors and Kings, thservants of his will . 'We are going to make an end of Europe,' he declared when he set forth on the Russian campaign. 'In three years we s":al be masters of the universe.' But th would-be master of the universe left his armies frozen on the Russian .plains, and St. Helena was waiting for him even as-lie spoke. "The Kaiser is the last victim of the ' intoxicating gas whence that dream springs. The American Ambassador, Mr Gerard, has recorded how the last of the Hohenzollerns said, 'Alexander, Ceasar, Theodoric, Frederick, and Napoleon aimed at worid-donv.nion: they failed, I shall succeed.' But the same unseen powers that brought his predecessors to ruin will doom him also. ' HOW JUDGMENT IS WROUGHT. "It is not by cataclysmic acts that judgment is wrought, but by the^regular working of the normal laws that (govern life. The ambition of worldconquest is doomed because no human personality is equal to the strain of such a burden. Only colossal egotism can dream such a dream, and when success seems within the grasp the egotism develops into mania. "These would-be conqueroi's of t ; ho world all go the same way. Alexander, convinced that no mere man could win such victories^ pi'oclaims himself a god, and kills his friend for doubting his divinity, Napoleon walks at last among men as if he were a god. 'You say man proposes and God disposes! I propose and I dispose,' declared the Corsican. The Kaser has»gone the same road; 'On me the spirit of God descended,' he declared ; 'I am His weapon, His sword, His viceregent. Woe to the disobedient. Death to cowards, and unbelievers. On the altar of this mad vanity judgment and wisdom are sacrificed. To achieve the end humanity is slain uv hecatombs. "In eleven yearsi Napoleon slew four millions of the youth and manhood of Europe that he might gratify his negalo-mania; in four years the Kaiser has slain twenty millions. But the fruit of that is isolation at, last in the midst of a horrified world. Napoleon found himself in the end without a friend; and the Kajser has set the world ablaze against him. The end is inevitable. The mesmerised awake, and then cometh judgment. The sword of the Divine judgment is to-day suspended over Potsdam.

The executioners of tjiat judgment will be the "people whom he made-the , v writhing tools and suffering victims to his colossal and mad ambition. THANKSGIVING DAY. "In the after years there will doubtless bs a Thanksgiving Day, in which the nations will recall thair deliverance from the'last effort to enslave them. The source of the thankfulness will be the memory of the awful fate from which the world has been saved. To this end the memory muat.be kept fresh of the crimes and barbarities wherewith the Germans have horrified humanity. Doubtless.':* some will say: forget them, tha church is not the place to recall them. ' But the church is the place to ■remember them, for the duty of the Church is" to convince the world of iniquity. "This is the measure of all miquty —the poison gas that damned f*r ever the chivalry of war; the Houses of God churned into the tortured earth ; the martyred nations in which no child is left alive; the million Armenians mastacied ; the women and children;perishing.on the high seas; the war waged not on to-day alone, but on the centuries of piety and faith. v HIS PLACE IN THE SUN. "The Kaiser demanded a place in the sun. The nations must see that he gets it—that every crime and every murder that have made men ashamed of their humanity shall have a place in the sun, illumined by the rays of noonday. "It is not by paper treaties that the world is to be saved from another overflow of the same diabolic lava. That deliverance can only come by the wrath that worketh judgment and by the change of heart that judgment brings. It is only by remembering tEe pit of,hell they have escaped that the nations will steel their souls to be the ministers of judgment. We have escaped a fate that is appalling to contemplate. That we have escaped it we owe to the heroic hearty of our sailors and soldiers. Through the watch and ward of our seatnen no enemy boatload has landed on these shores save as prisoners. "Four years ago the eighty thousand from Mons to the Marne gather-' ed to their breast the Prussian spear 3, and, dying, saved the world. Europe, Asia, and Africa have drunk deep of the blood of the sons of freedom. They are not dead. From their sacrifice will come the salvation of the world. The men of the British bread —Americans, Canadians, Australians, Scots, English, whatever their name — have died joyously, counting not their lives dear to them. They died not in vain, ■ v " The horizon is aglow with ths herald signs of victory. The men:;of Mons and Gallipoli head the van of the conquering hosts, unseen. Tomorrow the free-born sons of the Empire will Solemnly vow to keep faith with their fallen sons and comrades unto the end. And that end will.;be the fall and ruin of the last of ihs Ceasars." '