The Waikato Times, THAMES VALLEY GAZETTE, AND KAWHIA ADVOCATE. Established Thirty-Four Years. THE OLDEST DAILY NEWSPAPER IN THE WAIKATO. THE LARGEST CIRCULATION OF ANY DAILY PAPER SOUTH OF AUCKLAND. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1906. "IN A FOOL'S PARADISE."

Waikato Times, Volume LVII, Issue 8076, 11 December 1906, Page 2

The Waikato Times, THAMES VALLEY GAZETTE, AND KAWHIA ADVOCATE. Established Thirty-Four Years. THE OLDEST DAILY NEWSPAPER IN THE WAIKATO. THE LARGEST CIRCULATION OF ANY DAILY PAPER SOUTH OF AUCKLAND. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1906. "IN A FOOL'S PARADISE."

The above is the text of an editorial appearing in the first of ''Defence," the journal devoted to the interests of the National Leagne of New Zealand. The " Fool's Paradise " is New Zealand, of course, and she is held to be a fool's paradise because more attention is devoted to the land tenure question than to armament, and to female franchise than to the volunteer movement. The editorial in question contains several statements of a debatable, not to say extremely alarmist, nature. In. a young colony, and a small colony, where militarism is already rampant, where the very school children are put into uniform and drilled and trained to soldiering, and where every other man belongs to a volunteer corps or a defence rifle club, the people cannot fairly be said to be living in a fool's paradise, as far as the question of defence is concerned. What more New Zealand can do, short of conscription, it is difficult to see. " Defence " insists on the fact that we are at present absolutely dependent on the British navy for protection. To a large extent we are, and it is to the British navy we must always look for the protection of our shipping and commerce. In common with the great majority of the New Zealaud Press, we have consistently advocated the payment of a larger annual subsidy to the Admiralty to secure a permanent and more efficient fleet in colonial waters. As far as land defences are concerned, if the Defence Department were administered with wisdom, and the already huge annual defence votes judiciously expended, we would have as complete a wall of defence as we can ever expect to have, unless, as we said before, we embark upon the perilous experiment of conscription. Military enthusiasts all the world over are prone to subordinate all things ' to the necessity of defence, to see dangers which do not exist, and to magnify the importance of those that do ; but in a young country such as this, the question of defence from within, is, and must remain, a secondary consideration. Our energies must be centred on the attainment of that place in the industrial world on which our national life depends, before we can afford to spend more on land defences. With the argument that rifle shooting should be encouraged by all possible means, we cordially agree ; but is not the importance of accurate shooting already fully recognised r With the balance of power as it now stands it is scarcely necessary to seriously consider the appalling vision " Defence " conjures up: ". . . . And while

we are talking of what we will do and what we will not do, hawk-eyed statesmen pore over the map of the Pacific and plan futures lor NewZealand in which we have no part, exactly as our pioneers pored and planued over this land when with prophetic eye tney saw the ilaori swept away and their own people planted in his stead, in Pekin, in Tokio, in St. l'etershurgaud in Berlin, they have marked us thus: 'New Zealand —quite defenceless.' And their hearts are tilled with the land hunger which God inspires in strong men's hearts for the weeding out of the worthless and the unfit. That is what we are to-day —worthless, unlit. Unable to hold this land of ours from one Geiman army corps it it came steaming into sight! Unable to keep our women —our mothers, our sisters, our wives, our daughters, those we love —from the uunameable horrors of Asiatic hordes if the fateful hour suddenly struck ! Unable to keep a school open, to pay a pension, to enforce a single law —if we were taken by the thro.it by those who would not have dared to look into our grandsires' eyes. Truly a fool's .xradise ! Yet it is not yet too late." A eoiohy which rendeml such signal service to the Kmpire in South Au'it'i. Hiid which would have been prepared with further assistance had occasion demanded it ; which possesses forces of trained soldiers m every centre of population; and where the love of healthy sport calling for the continual development of fhe powers of endurance exists to the extent it docs in this country, can scarcely be termed worthless and unlit. With the material we have in New Zealand, and the watchfulness of ihu pother Country, the Mongolian, the Russian and the German

must look else whore tu satiate tlie laud hunger implanted iu their hearts. Any arrangement of a future for New Zealand by a Power which did not take into consideration the forces that would be arrayed against an attack 011 a British colony, would call down consciences that would be most disastrous to the designer. The National League has definite work before it, and a work that it carried out, will make it a tpowei' fW jood in the colo.iy. its mission, as we uml'-i - - stand it, is certainly not to inflame the public mind and create uni.ecessarily a feeling yf insecurity.