THE "LAST" WAR?

Timaru Herald, Volume CI, Issue 15517, 30 November 1914, Page 3

THE "LAST" WAR?

A RECURRING IDEA HISTORY'S: IRONIC COMMENT ON > PEACE IDEALS. ,An idea is spreading among people of philosophic or idealist temperament,says the "Daily "Graphic," that the present European confl-ct will be the. last war of .the nations. The idea is a . recurring one.-' Gibbon believed that . the era of conquerors was at an end. In 1851 the first great International Exhibition was held in London. A Peace Congress took; place in Exeter Hall, -with Richard C'obtlen and Horace Greeley present. Fifteen French workmen were delegate—the , first attempt; to enlist Labour in the cause. "We ardent youths in 1851," "says a writer Of the period,; "full of large ideas of the congress of the. nations and the palace of peace, thought, war should' be no more. ; We were to have the peaceful rivalry of tiade; nat on was to vie with nation only by underseCiing it and working' the harder. What a wonder it was- we did not spike all our guns! When' an old warrior with grey hair and dried laurels of Waterloo on his head, said we had better look after our fortifications we laughed him to .scorn." Peace Congresses similar to that -bf .'sl ih London were held in Manchester in 1852 .and Edinburgh 1853. , But alas! , by the latter year a disastrous war was already impending. In 1854 the Crimean War broke out. .

PEACE—AND 1870. Napoleon 111. called himself the "Napoleon of Peace," and proved it"; by enlarging :h?s armies and fighting battcar Lord Koberte has recalled his manor.ts of the ardjnt and .sympathetic reception t which the anticipations of Cobden and Bright met with •ah Franc?, and. the added ..weight n'hich i France's enthusiasm gave to those haopy .anticipations in England. "War, indeed," - seemed at an end. tomorrow, it'seemed, we should be' turning our barracks• into granaries and our arsenals into banking"houses. But oin the veiy 'thh't;. these statesmen ■''were : chei'isJung illusions of peace anduniversal disarmament, "in those very < months," says „ Lord . Roberts, "the" mightiest' and most disciplined force that this earth - had ever contained was silently being drilled , in that , wide region l'rom the Rhine to the Elbe and the Oder, and from the North Sua • •to the Bavarian frontier, . until,. the right hour having struck, that... army, di&cjosed itself, •in all its prodigious and crushing mass and in a'l its un.•matc.'aed capacity for destruction -v and ■war. And amid .those auspicious dreams of pea?e fpr what was the army. , being trained? ' Koeniggratz, Met 4, St. Privat, and Sedan are the answer. - Nor did that army- - pause until upon ,the ruins of the''Empire-of the third Napoleon—upon the ruins, I may say, of "France, unprepared in. peace, and ;,in war scattered aid had: ( reared tlis new Empire, the Emp re of ' 'William 1.," of Frederick 1., and Of ■ William II." Such was history's irrnic j comment upon the -eloquently-Urged of Bright ,and Cobden. • At no stage did the pnr.petso? msi"vjErsal pehcte seem blighter than 'whori "After tho Greco-Turlcish Wat and ' the< ; stepped in to promote a Conference ot: i the Powers to : dis''~uss disarmament. •. M. de B'joch had written his sensational book to prove that a greet war had already , by the normal development of the art or science of warfare, become a "physical impossih'lity. The wai- this Russian banker daoa.red to be jii possible was tCie war that has hr.untrd the imagination of mankind for the last thirty years and more, the war in which i;reat nations armed to the teeth •were to fl : ng themselves with all their resources into a struggle for life and •' death—in short,. the very war that j now convulses Europe!

THE HAGUE—AND RTJSSO-JAPAN;

( "The soldier is going down and the economist going up,'' said M. de B-ceh , most unfortunate of prophets. Victor Hugo's vision of cannon being t shown j in museums "as to-day is shown some , uncouth instrument of torture, in wonder that such a thing could ever j have existed."' became common to 'many good men. In May, • 1899, the Peace Conference assembled at The Hague. It was hailed as the Parliament [of the World; the federation of mankind. "It is quite out of date to '-couple the wo'vj U;or>°.w :+ h tl' - A-ment," said Baron de Staai. "For the finst time in ihe anna.s of the paot," wrote an EngLsh arbibtration.st, "the solidarity of mankind is recognised, and internationalism takes its pdace as a' factor in ■ the., history of the future." "Nofcin any little Bethel of our- movement j but before the eyes of all mankind and by the deputies of • twenty-six free States,*! test-'ficd a third," "has; the dream been confirmed, s the supremacy cf Reason aclmo.v edg:;'ed." - 'That very year the South African' war began., and at no long 1 intervals the Russo-Japanesa, the Balkan, and fhe European wars followed. Lolig ago, writerslike Kant, Bentham, and "Buckle pointed out that the subsidence of war was "inevitable as society progressed. ' On. the f aceof it so ■far they are wrong; yet it may be that the general war now proceeding is destined to put ah' end to intolerable'strain and to bequeath a long, j if hot a lasting, era of peace.

TO EACH GENERATION ITS OWN"I do not believe personally," said Mr Carl Heath, of the National Peace Council, to the writer<;recently, "that. We are coming to the tend of war jiffc yet, because I believe that 'the end ■■of war' rests uipon a w.de educaauA of ,the democracies ! of the world. Wften : the democracies of the world are suificiently educated we shall get such an organisationof the. world as .will pre. . vent, war by some such method as t&at 1 proposed by 'President Wilson. Tflis i Wilson-Bryan plan automatically interposes an international means of inquiry in cases of dispute, and in effect tends to delay the possibilities of war until tempers ar en-o' longer inflamed. I While I earnestly hope the results of the present war may be to make such a war in Europe again impossible, it is.far-too early to lay down the statement that it will do so." That, in ■ fact,, is tHe gist of the matter—it is ?• "too early." It is too early to do ' anything but look forward to a state ; o&constant preparedness to defend our- ■ selves and the right. By and by the :, time_ will- come for efforts to establish conditions-which will' make the competition in huge armaments unnecessary. "But to tho&e who feel confident this is ; the last war, the words of' Froude mav : be commended "The temper of eacli generation ,is a .continual surprise. The Fate* delight' to' contradict our .most confident expectations." • • I