WHERE LIBERTY IS UNKNOWN.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume II, Issue 438, 6 July 1915, Page 10

WHERE LIBERTY IS UNKNOWN.

w I.- ■■ 11 ■— m I II —,—..— OBEDIENCE TO DESPOTISM. Though it is without a trace of heat, anger, or passion, no stronger

or more convincing indictment of official Germany, for its part in the war has ever been made by a leading citizen of a neutral country than that which is contained in a document just drawn up and signed by ttr Charles W. Eliot, President Emeritus, of Harvard University, and one of America's most distinguished men. "The German people do not'know what social and political liberty is," says Dr Eliot. "They do not know how free peoples regard the sanctity of contract, not only for business purposes, but for political purposes, to say nothing of 'honourable obligations.' "Nothing could be franker than the original explanation which the! German Chancellor gave of the breaking of the treaiies concerning the neutrality of Belgium; but his frankness is evidence thai he did not understand in the least the free-i man's idea of sanctity of contract—the foundation of all public law and usage in a free country. Their Fatal Mistake. ".In a country despotically or autocratically ruled, there is no such condition of public opinion. To the German mind political liberty means public incapacity and weakness—'particularly in war. "The Germans know nothing at all about the liberty England has won through parliamentary government, through party government.' Their complete ignorance on that subject is the explanation of the ratal mistake the German Government made in going to war last summer before they knew what England was going to do or could do. One could not have a better illustration of the complete ignorance of the German people as to what political and social liberty really is." Concerning the possibility that the United Slates may be most vitally

affected by the colossal conflict, Dr Eliot is emphatic. * ■■ "We must hope and pray," he , says, "that we shall not be drawn into this most horrible war of all time. But that escape will be due to . the fact that Russia, England, and France have succeeded in defeating Germany and Austria-Hungary." Dr/Eliot makes a pitiless analysis of German efficiency, as he sees it, "which takes hold of every child in Germany at birth, and follows every youth and every man and Woman through life until death." This efficiency, he declares, has not brought forth a single one of many great discoveries in surgery, preventive medicine, chemistry, physics, or complex business organisations, a list of which he draws up in proof of his assertion.