THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 1914. THE WAR DOGMA AND PANGERMANISM.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 1 September 1914, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 1914. THE WAR DOGMA AND PANGERMANISM.

It is a strange experience to tho common-sense Britisher to open up a wfark (authentically, German, wlifce-h. deals with the subject of war. It is a rude shock to his pre-conceptions. He may previously havo Relieved in conserving and intensifying the virile qualities of his race. He may have opined that the modern world has become somewhat gross with commerce, somewhat ever-eager for material gain. For progress, he may argue, has been mistakenly conceived the mere machinery of progress — roads, railways, an increased quantity and variety of commodities, an increased security for those tangible concomitants of comfortable well-be-ing which so easily become' the impedimenta, the superfluous and overwhelming baggage of a soul's progress from tune unto eternity. But to be told that the remedy for this incipient fatty degeneration of our civilisation is an organised battue of humanity, a scarifying and devastating of a landscape, intensely cultivated, thriftily-ordered, unremittingly industrialised! Such a dogma is more than an outrage to sentiment which comes and goes, which hurries the public mind into untenable extremes. It is a flat negation of reason. Yet this is what the Pan-Ger-man has been telling us, and in so many words. A river of blood, he contends, is the sole efficient baptismal font of a nation's character. His dogma had a sinister source. It was originated by Germany's ablest a.nd strongest chancellor. It was the cynical aphorism of a mind indubitably great in its diplomatic perspicacity, its resoxircefulness, its unflinching ruthlcssness. It was the conviction of a, character whose career might well supply a second Goethe with a second Mephistopheles. It was the indelible stamp left by tho personality of Bismarck on the German State. It was crystallised into a phrase that history will never forget—"Blood and Iron." Blood and iron, Bismarck said, would make Gennany one and indivisible. Blood and iron, the modern pan-German contends, will keep her one and make the world one with her. Force Tie takes to bo the motive spring of tvreaWeth century "Welt politik.'* '

Bismarck's work survived Lis own brief day and generation. It has grown since to dimensions which cause ib to over-shadow a world, on iho whole, at peace. But, singular and sinister, its most menacing shadow has for twenty years lain athwart the ' German people. PanGermanism, more than any one other cause, has brought into being that ominous phenomenon a world in arms. Each several jingoism is, we take it, sui goneus. The Englishjnan's is never.taken seriously to lieart by the ablest minds of the nation, but is voiced by the laureates of the music lin 11. It belied, wo think, those liner, firmer, deep-seated qualities which, in her hour of stress, the KmpiiHj's people have never failed to reveal. That of Franco in the Revolutionary wars was the frank fanaticism of passionate and logically narrow minds. Germany's, like all jingoisms, lacks the humility wherein alone can bo propagated the seed of a true wisdom. It is, however, expounded more speciously than any up to date. Its task, it claims, is to propagate i'ts (own indubitably-sup-erior civilisation the wide world over. The many admittedly lino qualities of the German polity, educational and industrial, it is not proposed to discuss. It goes without spying, also, that the defects of these qualities also exist. Wliat wo wish to point out is the fatal arrogance, the more calm, the moro fatal of such an assumption of world reformership. We make bold to say that greater, more stabily-based intellects than any existent in Germany to-day, have also had reforms to propagate. But these intellects, while loftier in their ends, have also been incomparably more scrupulous as to means. Hanging widely through space, they have ncv"ertheless retained a salutary sense of infinity. Advancing boldly, in time, they have preferred to measure themselves in terms of eternity. Ignorant they were, and knew themselves, though according to human standards, wonderfully enlightened. Arrogant they could not be. "Whom tho gods Avish to destroy they first make mad." From Nebueadnezzar, who ate) grass, down to Kaiserdoin incarnate, history is strewn with the tragic wrecks of self-sufficient human greatness. To-day two-thirds of Europe has rallied to the contest with Prussian self-assurance. Powers, let aloof, look coldly on, hostile at lieart, to the over-weening, pretensions of an heroic bully. And what is dreaded? Is it German enlightenment? German literature this hundred years past has permeated the mind of the world. Is it German science? The world has gone to school to German universities. Is it German commerce and industry? Tho products of these two are wanted in the four, corners of the earth. Art, literature, and trade had need of no imperial mandate to gain an entry to the homes and hearths of every civilised nation. They have travelled to regions remote from the faintest echo of the tr.eacl of German legions. The dread is of German coercion. That dread leaves but one choice to every people free in spirit. It is a choice gallantly taken by the little country now lying under the iron heel of the" conqueror. What shall it profit a nation if it gain the whole world and lose its own soul? The soul of a people is indubitably the freedom its institutions have enabled it to conserve and "propagate. It is this strife for freedom which gives its transcendental moral worth to that titanic struggle extending from the Vosges to Ostend. It gives that moral worth to the defenders' efforts. That moral worth is claimed, nevertheless, by the aggressor. Alaric and his Goths, Atlila and his Huns, Tambuzlain and his Tartars, these historic prototypes of th.e latest eruption of barbarism wero at least free of the 'trti/nt of the' saintly-phrase, which sanctifieth not. They advanced frankly, m 'the spirit of Blueher, riding through London. They knew and sand they word out for plunder. The sword of the Lord and of Gideon has often, we take it, been drawn by an oppressed and insurgent people. It has often been claimed by charlatans, is, we learn, to be asked for anew on foehalf of German general headquarters. Truly, this world is, was, and airways will be, an exceedingly strange one. Belgium, raped, ravaged, and despoiled ; Belgium, which should have been inviolate if Germany's Imperial name gives aught of worth to treaty paper. We picture Kaiser and Kaiserdom as we would have them confronted with tho rums of one Walloon cottage, with the mangled and desecrated body of one Walloon peasant. Who, then, is a King, and royal? He who died for his hearth and home, or the" tyrant, his word a scorn and a by-word, his foot planted callously on the hot ashes? PanGermanism and the baptism of blood, the welding of relentless cold steel? Even so, if so it must be; but the baptism was for Belgium. The harvest of bitterness, of hatred, of suffering, will be for all mankind. And even should the would-be conquer, what gall in the honey of conquest 1 Lorraine, forty-four years held, is still unreconciled. Prussian Poland, held over a/ century, stiill winces and chafes at the yoke. What gain in power can compensate) that loss of respect which is the tribute of all free peoples to a tyranny, howsoever able, enlightened, and progressive?