A NEW WAY OF LIFE.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13918, 1 June 1909, Page 3

A NEW WAY OF LIFE.

(Spectator.) j In a brilliant summary of ;the events of tlie past month to be fojiud in the April i ortnightly, the wrier, while dealing with the naval crisis) uses these words:—"The problem wilL-hot depart. We shall have to meet it jot by battleships alone but by a nefv way of life." We are profoundly convinced of the truth of this statement.; We have got as a nation to face ,'i situation winch can only be a dequajely met by 'a new way of life." •Hjhen we say this we must not be thojight to be yielding to the pessimism which lias affected a certain section <jf the popiiT lation, or to give encoutagement to the notion that we have bijeome decadent as a people, or that we; have in any way begun to decline as! one of the Great Powers of the worljlv We are not among those who thiik that the nation has suffered in its iioral health, or that we are worse froiii that point of view than our forefathers. On the contrary, we believe thai the nation was never better in this-respect, and that there never was a llrger proportion of the population aixious to do right, and to act in accordance with what it believes to be the' will of God. Again, we doubt wheth(i there ever was a time when men wire more sincrely patriotic, and more anxious to maintain the Empire "iii health and wealth long to live." It is true,, no doubt, that now, as whet Wordsworth wrote his famous sonnet, there is much to deplore in the national character, aud much that needs ehaige. AVe are far too much given to luiury and softness. If our richer elisses are less drunken, they are more gluttonous and more extravagant and .effeminate in their personal habits.' Our life is still too oiten the "mean liaridiwork of craftsman, cook, or groom." But though these are evils that cry aloud for remedy, and- though we do not forget them, they are 'not the evils on which we want to dwell at the present moment. While wb do not deny the 1 continuous need for 1 higher moral ideals, what we specially! desire to emphasise is the need for a greater seriousness, or, if you will, hardness, of outlook. What we have got to change is a certain light-heartedness, or complacency of temper, that has lately marked our' people,—the easy belief that every one must admir.e and respct our good intentions and our noble and humanitarian point of view. We have got in future to fac(| the world, not as we should like it lo* Vb~, but as it is,—the world of blood and iron, controlled by men who are .not humanitarians and philanthropists, but persons intensely human on the other side of man's nature, persons who do not take what they would call a Sundayschool view of the world, but rather the view that man is still a wild beast, that the race is to the strong and not to the well-intentioned, that victory belongs to the big battalions, not to those who say that they envy no man anything, and who cannot understand why nations should hate or be jealous of each other.