MAX HARDEN EXILED.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume II, Issue 511, 29 September 1915, Page 6

MAX HARDEN EXILED.

THE REASON WHY. INDISCREET PRAISE FOR THE BRITISH. Maximilian Harden has been banished from Germany. Harden has a following of his own, and the supporter of his review, "Die Zukunft," are not likely to acquiesce tamely in his exile.

Playing the Man. The ostensible reason for this action on the part of the German Government as the approval expressed by Harden of the action of Italy. There are other articles in the current number of "Die Zukunft," however. In one he defends the English:— It is puerile to declare that the Englishman is a slave to sport. His sport, to which he devotes almost as much time as the German does to his beer, hardens his body, and is therefore a direct gain to his country. Take a glance at the girls, the old ladies in the West of London, at the working men and their children on the immense playing fields, and compare them with the anaemic, fat, flaccid, deformed specimens of humanity one meets at every step in any Continental town.

The Englishman is handsomer, healthier, and braver. In his island, beaten against by the waves, lie speedily" grasped the idea that only the vigorous could conquer the earth, and straightway lie set about creating for himself the indispensable hygienic conditions of a nation that refuses to grow degenerate. The result of his age-long training is that the Englishman has become a reasonable being; he knows how to obey without humiliating himself, and to force obedience without recourse to capricious or tyrannical legislation. In India a commissioner witty a handful of whites at his command of natives,, who dare not lift their eyes at him.

In London, when disorder threatens, dukes and shopkeepers unite and organise themselves into a constabulary service. Every man, be he f a millionaire or a wage-earning clerk, instinctively knows and does his duty—in short, he plays the man; The Might of England. | This can hardly have been pleasant reading to a Government which has suborned the decadent modern representatives of Bismarck's "reptile Press" to assail the English in ! language always vicious *andi>often ;i j obscene. But Harden has still j

arrows in his quiver;— | It is precisely because ? this; great preserving force is always inherent and ; alwaysready that there, is absolute freedom of speech, of criticism, arid of satire. Everybody may speak his mind as he likes about the King, the Ministers; the institutions, the functionaries, the. nation! An Englishman allows himself to be brow-beaten by none, be it the highest functionary in the State. Young people of both sexes .go out together freely and pass entire days on the river without the supervision of any, aunt or elderly spinster, and not a coarse word disturbs the cheerful companionship. He who should wound the ear of an honest woman with a word of insult would be instantly expelled from all respectable society. We cannot help praising whatever is worthy of praise. The souls of' grocers? They never thought, of their grocer shops, but risked every peril and sacrificed every penny to destroy Bonaparte; they were -jthe only _ people in Europe whom the genius of the great conqueror failed to vanquish. And if the British Empire is passing through a grave crisis which threatens its existence, from every corner of the earth will rise men of Anglo-Saxon blood who will hurry to her aid and demonstrate to the world the invincible might of this people.