Rangitikei Advocate. TWO EDITIONS DAILY. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 18. EDITORIAL NOTES.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXVII, Issue 10530, 18 December 1912, Page 4

Rangitikei Advocate. TWO EDITIONS DAILY. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 18. EDITORIAL NOTES.

WHILE Mr Keir Hardie and othertheorists and sentimentalists are striving to prevent youths from being fitted to take part in the defence of their country, and Lord Roberta and other practical men are strenuously urging the need for compulsory training, it is interesting to note that in a recent speech Lord Haldane said: —“In these days a soldier may be one who wears a black coat, for there is a lot to, he done in peace in order to ho prepared for war, and civilians must take their part in it. Seven years ago, when a new Ministry was being formed, the late Six* Henry Campbell-Bauueramu sent for me and suggested one or two offices. I replied to him: “There is another office I should like. I do not know

much about it, but it is full of the | most fascinating problems,’ Sir Henry 'What is that?’ I answered “The War Office —is it full?’ Sir Henry exclaimed: ‘Full! No one will touch it with a pole. ’ Well, I went there, and I really had a very easy task. I found a number of young generals with their minds full cf our shortcomings, because of the South African War, with its evidence of unpreparedness. The Army was not organised in peace as it would require to be in war, so they all sat down, I was a layman who scarcely knew the distinction between a battalion and a brigade. We sat down to think together, and we did think. We may pray that war will never come. It is a terrible calamity, arresting everything and inflicting misery and misfortune on countless thousands, but we never know when it may be upon us. It may come like a thief in the night, and, therefore, the wisest course., and the one that must make for peace,' is to be prepared for war.” It is also the opinion of many that war is not an unmixed evil, but brings some benefits in its train. A writer in the Canadian University Magazine suggests that the civilised world stands in need of the “war cure” for the remedying of its spiritual indigestion. Prolonged peace has allowed commercial ideals to become dominant and the love of pleasure -and luxury to possess the peoples. The desire for personal gain has taken the place of the longing to serve the community. The nations have waxed fat, bilious, and confused, vaguely aware of a pressing need for those boons of deprivation, asceticism, strenuous work and poverty, which mankind generally has never learned to obtain save through blood-letting and experience of the terrible, fierce and great passions of lamentation, pity and despair, of exultation in strife, and sacrifice.” “Military philosophers tell us that war heals, cures and elevates, ’ ’ says the writer. “Russell, who knew the American people before and after their civil strife, testified that its four frighful years had made them ‘a nation of gentlemen. ’ What have fifty years of unmitigated commerce made them? Cn any perceptive being who roams Great Britain, or even the cities of Canada, seriously believe, unless blinded by prejudice and national conceit, that we Britons are vastly more admirable? Everywhere is heard the scream of unrest and discontent, the spewing of philosophers made pessimists by watching and thinking on that world which the chartered demigods of finance have produced. To remake it nearer to the heart’s desire come innumerable proposals, unitedly indicative of nothing so much as of a general sense that the conditions of human life are little worth preserving.” The deeper meaning of the signs of the times, adds this authority, is that civilisation requires to be brought face to face with stern realities and braced and chastened by bitter suffering. An Australian poet had the same idea in his mind, when he wrote that “The star of the South must rise in the lurid clouds of war. ’ ’ But it should not be necessary to wreck civilisation in order to mend it.