Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Third of a Century.] SATURDAY, MARCH 19 1910. "THE VALOUR OF IGNORANCE."

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume LXII, Issue 9630, 19 March 1910, Page 4

Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Third of a Century.] SATURDAY, MARCH 19 1910. "THE VALOUR OF IGNORANCE."

According to "Life," the book of the month lias been published under tho above title. It is a book written by General Homer Laa,, in which an American scarifies America. In this country a New Zealauder may not scarify New Zealand, for if he cioes so lie is at once told that ho is uupatriotic, that lie is injuring tho Dominion. Tho questiou as to whether his criticism be true or uutrue is not raised. If it be complimentary, it i-s taken to be true; and if it be uncomplimentary, it is taken to bo false. Iv this way we come to live iv a fool's paradise, aud have, perhaps, more of "tho valour of ignorauce" than is profitable to us. There are, however, bigger aud broador minded man iv America, who welcome friendly criticism, and think all the more of General Homer Lea for his outspokenness, Thore is no note of braggadocio in "The Valour of Iguorauce," the Stars aud Stripes are not flaunted, but iv the grimmest terms the author strives to put facts before his readers.

General Homer Lea possesses a strong descriptive faculty. The following peu picture of a modern ironclad is termed by "Lifo" to be "a purpi? patch" : —"Never have the gods of all tho tribes put upon the seas such monsters as man now sends over them. To contemplate them is to wonder; to know them is to look up to these gods aud smile. That which is as soft as iron belongs iv no way to them. Their steel bowels, grinding and rumbliug below the splash of the sea, are fed ou quarried rock. Their arteries are steel, their nerves copper, their blood red and blue flames. With the prescience of the supernatural, they peer into space Their voices scream through gales, and they whisper together over a thousand miles of sea. They reach out aud destroy that which the eye of man cannot perceive." Another peu-pictnro ou tho modern army is equally impressive:—

"The army of to-day aud to-morrow is a sombre, gigantic machine devoid of all melodramatic heroics, but in itself all-heroic, silent, aud terrible; a machine that roquires years to form its separate parts, years to assemble them together, aud other years to make them work smoothly and irresistibly. Theu, when it is sot iv motion, naught shall stop it but a similar machine, stronger and better. "

General Homer Lea points out the evil side of commercialism :—-" As the human body is nourished by food, so is a nation nourished by its industries. Man does not live to eat, but secure? food that his body may be sustained

while he straggles forward to the consummation of his desires. Iv such j relation does industrialism stand to the State. It is sustenance, a food that builds up the nation aud gives it strength to preserve its ideals; to work out its career among the other nations of the world; to become superior to them or to go down before them. Never can industrialism, without national destruction, be taken from its subordinate place. When a man has no aspirations, no object to attain during life, but simply lives to eat, he excites our loathing aud contempt. So, when a country makes industrialism the end, it becomes a glutton among nations, vulgar, swiuish, arrogant, whose kingdom lasts proportionately no louger than life remains to the swine among men. It is this purposeless gluttony, the outgrowth of national industry, that is commercial-

ism." He derides even the army to which he belongs, and declares that the United states army, which only totals sixty thousand effective men, is, contrasted with tho armies of other great powers, like a Ilea hopping along in a procession of elephants. "This Re~public," he writes, "druukonly with the vanity of its resources, will not differentiate between them and actual power. Japan, with infinitely less resources, is militarily forty times more powerful. Germany, France or Japan can each mobilise in one mouth more troops, scientifically trained by educated officers, than this Republic could gather together in throe years. Iv the Frauco-Prussiau War, Germany mobilised iv the field, ready for battle, over half a million soldiers, more than one hundred ami fifty thousand horses, and twelve hundred pieces of artillery, iv five days. The United States could not mobilise for active service a similar force iv three years. " General Homor Lea unhesitatingly assigns to Japan the lordship of the Pacific. Japan could oven laud a million of men on the western coast of tho United States, where the coastal defences are thoroughly worthless. The Eastern States would be powerless to expel the invaders. Those wars and rumours of wars of which military experts speak are simply horrors, and remind us of a saying by a philosophical author, who recently declared that the world was only now emerging from "the dog stage." Men still resemble animals in the delight which they take in harking and biting. Of course, all over the world are to be found higher teachings and liighor ideals. But the communities which cherish those have to acknowledge that "the dog stage" is still in evidence, aud that it must run its course until the new aud better lights of spiritual progress and of true human brotherhood supersede tho old practices of envy, hatred, aud tho destruction of human life. "The Valour of Ignor- ■ auce" will not always prevail, but it

may be many a year before a new heaven and a uew earth terminate '' the

dog stage. "