PATER'S CHATS WITH THE BOYS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3247, 7 June 1916, Page 74

PATER'S CHATS WITH THE BOYS.

. o "THE WAR FOR PUBLIC RIGHT." I suppose very few of my readers get "The Round Table: A Quarterly Review of the Politics of the British Empire." It is a very fine Review, and its articles are generally so full of balanced thought that I think all teachers instructing the upper standards should read it. digest it, and pass on the assimilated matter to their pupils. For that reason I am giving one or lwv> Chats from an article in the March issue. "The War for Public Right" is its title, but we might take as a tub-heading " Feudalism versus }lodern Democracy.'' The article is "divided into seven sections, each of which can almost stand alone. I.—PEUSSIANISM v. COMMONWEALTH. This is the first section, and the writer opens by saying that the fundamental dogma of Prussianism is summed up in Nietzsche's phrase, "War and courage have accomplished greater things than love for one's fellow men." The New Testament, according to Prussian junkerism, is a back number. But what are the standards, then, to govern conduct? The Prussians say that there is no universal standard. Peace conferences, Hague conventions, arbitration treaties are only expedients showing want of will power and firmness to stand for the ideals of those who make them. " Life is regarded as a conflict with others, a struggle for existence, in which self-assertion is the primary law, and the. will to power the primary means to success. In this world morality lias no place. Morality is the philosophy of the weak, who hope thereby to deter the strong from their dominating purposes. Hence the men who are really great, the supermen, are those who are pitiless—as pitiless to themselves as to others, —disdainfully magnanimous to the weak, perhaps, but allowing neither suffering nor horror, love nor friends, honour nor remorse, to deter them from the pitiless pursuit of power." But) we must not make a mistake. This struggle for domination takes place to a greater or less orient "in the competitive individualism of modern democracy. But nowhere else in the civilised world is it SO entirely a basis of government." In the Prussian system, the undi rlyiug principle is that " life is a frantic struggle for existence between individuals mainly concerned to assert their own will regardless of others," so " the only hope of creating a tolerable society is to establish at the centre a nucleus of force which is able to coerce all other wills into obedience to itself." THE PRUSSIAN A DISCIPLE OF HOBBES. The article introduces a reference to Hobbes, which I shall amplify by a quotation. Thomas llobbes was born in the year of the Armada, 1588. and died in 1679, so he lived in the latter end of the reign of Elizabeth, through the reigns of James I and Charles I, through the Commonwealth, and most of the reign of Charles 11, so he saw stirring times. Well, cue of his works as a political materialistic philosopher was " Leviathan," and this is what " Harmsworth's Encyclopaedia" has to say of it: "The object of Hobbes's 'Leviathan' i 3 to determine the origin of sovereignty. This he finds in an original social compact, whereby man. weary of the insecurity of the stale of nature, which is a state of war. agrees to submit to the authority of an individual or of individuals strong enough to repress anarchy. This compact, once made, is permanent, and cannot be annulled at" the wish of the subjects; and it is the fluty of the sovereign to repress all rebellion as a crime against society. The sovereign maintains his position by force, not by consent. Nevertheless the citizens are not losers, because any government is better than the primitive anarchy." Put another way. Hobbes's " Leviathan" explains '■society as being due to a social contract between men

naturally nasty, brutish, and vile, as the only alternative to chronic violence and misery.” This is more or loss true of all governments; but the process of evolution works away from this gospel of force and by education introduces and then perfects the principles of democracy. The Germans, under Prussian domination, have hardly yet emerged from barbarism, and so far have illustrated Hobbes's work in their own Empire, and want to assume that all other nations are in a re ore elementary condition than they are, and must be brought under their domination. This gospel wo are resisting. The present German Empire started with the Mark of Brendenburg, which “was reclaimed from barbarism by the military force of the Knights of the Teutonic Order, and was given internal peace and unity by the military power of the Hohenzollern autocracy.” Frederick the Great went further, and “ converted the Prussian people from a nation into an army obedient to the King ” ; and so, as was said by Miraboan, a prominent figure in the French Revolution, “War b ‘came Prussia’s national industry.” Then came Bismarck, the man of bicod and iron, “who solved the inveterate disorder of Germany by using the military power of Prussia, to compel all parts to unite under the domination of the Prussian State.” Now we have the Kaiser wanting the whole civilised world to unite under the dominion of the Prussian State. As we are witnessing now, force is the basis of the Prussian state, and it depends in theory and in fact upon a central power claiming supreme authority to issue decrees and compel obedience to its will. “ This it why the Government of Germany is driven to assert its power by using the mechanism of the army, the schools, the universities, the pulpit, and the- press, to inculcate the duty of obedient e in its subjects, as the simplest means of saving it from continually having to assert its authority by physical force.” Analysed, this is to say that Prussianism destroys freedom of conscience. The essence of freedom is responsibility, and the essence of Prussianism is the crushing of that sense of responsibility by every possible means.” It also means that the citizens have no effective means of controlling their rulers, and out of this blind obedience there arises the servitude of fatalism or fanaticism. “Luther said that the justification of liberty was that man could only serve God and his neighbour if he were free to choose the means. The modern German has evolved a political system under which the individual abdicates this freedom, and hands over his political responsibility to Lose who inherit the privilege of directing the State.” And with this I’ll step to-day.